If you run an OT, speech pathology, or psychology practice with an established paediatric caseload, the Thriving Kids program is probably already on your radar. But if your response so far has been to file it away as “one to watch,” I’d encourage you to reconsider. October is closer than it feels, the detail coming from government remains thin, and the practices that will be best positioned when this program goes live are the ones making decisions now — not in September.
This article is specifically for practices with existing paediatric clients. Not new-to-paediatric practices trying to enter the space. The stakes here are different. Your NDIS-funded paediatric caseload is likely one of the most valuable parts of your business, and it’s about to be tested.
Here’s what I know, what I don’t know, and what I think you should do.
The honest picture: what we know and what’s still unclear
Thriving Kids is a $4 billion joint federal and state investment targeting children aged 8 and under with autism or developmental delay who have low to moderate support needs. From 1 October 2026, services begin rolling out. Full national rollout is expected by 1 January 2028, at which point changes to NDIS access arrangements for this cohort come into effect.
Children with high support needs and permanent significant disability remain on the NDIS. That distinction matters, but so does the scale of what’s shifting. About 170,000 children were receiving early intervention supports such as speech pathology and occupational therapy through the NDIS in 2025. A significant proportion of those children have low to moderate support needs, which is exactly the cohort Thriving Kids is designed to move out of the NDIS and into a new community-based model.
What’s less clear is how that new model will be funded, what the service rates will look like, and how consistently it will be delivered across states and territories. Occupational Therapy Australia has raised concerns that the two-year timeframe before NDIS access is removed may not be sufficient for new services to be established and working well. Advocacy groups including Autism Awareness Australia have called for the rollout to slow down until the detail is right.
I say all this not to add to the anxiety (plenty of that already exists) but because I think it’s important to be honest about the context you’re operating in. The practitioners I’ve spoken to aren’t uniformly optimistic about Thriving Kids. Many have real concerns about losing high-value long-term NDIS clients and having to replace them with private-paying clients who may not be as committed or as lucrative. Those concerns are valid. NDIS-funded children under 7 receive an average of $16,700 per year in funding, and depending on support needs, plans can run significantly higher. Compare that to a private-paying client worth a few thousand dollars annually, often with shorter retention, and you can see why practices are nervous about the shift.
The question isn’t whether the landscape is changing. It is. The question is what to do about it while there’s still runway to act.
Why your existing NDIS clients are actually your first marketing asset
Before you think about attracting new Thriving Kids families, I’d start with your existing paediatric clients. Some of them will be eligible for Thriving Kids. Some are already confused about what it means for them. And almost none of them will have been clearly communicated to by their allied health provider about what’s coming.
That’s an opportunity most practices are leaving on the table.
Talk to your existing paediatric families now. Find out what questions they have about Thriving Kids. What don’t they understand? What are they worried about? What have they been Googling? Their answers will tell you more about the content you need to create than any policy document will. It will also tell you whether your intake process, your funding conversations, and your onboarding experience need to be updated for a cohort that won’t arrive with an NDIS plan and a support coordinator.
There’s a practical upside here too. Families who feel informed and supported by their provider through a confusing transition don’t leave. They become advocates. Getting ahead of Thriving Kids with your existing clients isn’t just good marketing — it’s good retention.
Understanding the family you’re marketing to
The Thriving Kids family is a different profile to the established NDIS family, and your marketing needs to reflect that.
Your existing NDIS paediatric clients typically arrived with a plan, a funding envelope, a support coordinator helping them navigate the system, and a reasonably clear sense of what they needed and how to access it. They were, in many ways, a guided referral. The system did a lot of the navigation work for them.
Thriving Kids families are coming in earlier and with less support. They’re parents who’ve noticed something about their child’s development, been told help is available, and now have to find their way to you without the scaffolding of a formal diagnosis or an NDIS plan. A 2025 national survey by Autism Awareness Australia found that 32% of families waited more than two years for a diagnostic assessment, with over half waiting more than a year. For many of these families, Thriving Kids is the first time a pathway to support has felt accessible, and they’re going to arrive at your door (or your website) with a lot of unanswered questions.
Your marketing to this audience isn’t about selling your services. It’s about answering questions they’re already asking, guiding them through a system they don’t understand, and positioning your practice as the expert that can help. That’s a different message to “NDIS registered provider.” It requires different content, different language, and a different intake experience.
The marketing audit: what I’d be looking at right now
If I were auditing a paediatric allied health practice’s marketing today, here’s what I’d be checking, and what would concern me if it was missing.
Your website messaging
Most practices with strong NDIS paediatric caseloads have their website oriented almost entirely around NDIS families. The language, the intake instructions, the FAQs — all of it assumes the visitor knows what NDIS is, has a plan, and is looking for a registered provider. That messaging doesn’t speak to a Thriving Kids family at all.
The fix starts with a dedicated Thriving Kids page (not buried under Services) that explains what the program is in plain language, what your practice offers within it, and that no diagnosis is required to access support. But the page alone isn’t enough. Your homepage needs to acknowledge Thriving Kids visibly. Your navigation needs to include it. And your intake process needs to be ready for families who arrive without a plan or a coordinator.
Your referral sources
Do you actually know where your current paediatric clients are coming from? If the honest answer is “mostly coordinators and NDIS pathways,” that’s useful information, because it means you’re potentially exposed if those referral channels thin out. The referral network you need to build for Thriving Kids is different: GPs, maternal and child health nurses, early childhood educators, kindergarten and childcare directors, and paediatricians managing long diagnostic waitlists who need somewhere to refer families in the interim.
Those relationships take time to build. Starting now gives you a few months before October. Starting in September gives you a week.
Your Google presence
Two things here. First, your Google Business Profile. It needs to mention Thriving Kids explicitly in your description, and you should be creating Google Posts about the program now. Parents searching for local providers will often look at your GBP before they look at your website.
Second, if you’re running Google Ads, your campaigns almost certainly aren’t set up to capture Thriving Kids search traffic. Terms like “Thriving Kids provider [suburb]”, “OT Thriving Kids”, “speech pathology no diagnosis required” — these aren’t in most campaigns yet. They will be searched heavily once October arrives. Search engines need time to index and rank new pages, and ad campaigns need time to gather performance data. Neither happens overnight.
Your content
A single page is a start. What actually builds visibility is a content cluster, a set of articles, FAQs, and resources that answer the specific questions families are searching for. Questions like: does my child need a diagnosis to access therapy? What’s the difference between Thriving Kids and the NDIS? How do I get started in [your suburb]? What does an OT actually do within the Thriving Kids program?
These articles serve two purposes simultaneously: they rank for the searches families are making, and they pre-answer the questions your intake team will field every week from October onwards. The practices that build this content now will have months of search visibility behind them when the program goes live. The ones that start in November will be starting from zero.
What “becoming the visible expert” actually looks like
The single most important thing a practice can do before October is become the clear, helpful, visible resource for families navigating Thriving Kids in their area. Not the loudest. Not the most promotional. The most genuinely useful.
That means publishing content that answers real questions, in plain language, from the perspective of a clinician who understands both the child development side and the system. It means having a Google Business Profile that signals “this practice knows about Thriving Kids.” It means referrers in your area knowing you’re across it and ready to take referrals.
And it means syndicating all of that across website, email, social, and paid ads so the message reaches the right people through the channels they’re actually using. For parents of young children, that’s Facebook and Instagram. For referrers, GPs, and early childhood professionals, that’s LinkedIn and direct outreach. Your email list, if you have families on it, is an obvious place to communicate directly about what’s coming and what it means for them.
The practices I’d be backing to grow through Thriving Kids aren’t necessarily the biggest or the most established. They’re the ones who understood early that a confused, underinformed market rewards whoever shows up first with clear, helpful answers.
Practical next steps — in priority order
If I had to rank the actions worth taking right now, in order of leverage:
- Talk to your existing paediatric families. Find out what they know, what they don’t, and what they’re worried about. This informs everything else.
- Build your referral network. Identify the GPs, MCH nurses, childcare directors, and paediatricians within reach of your practice. Make contact before October, not after.
- Build a dedicated Thriving Kids page. Live, indexed, and findable before demand peaks. Include a clear call to action for families who land on it.
- Update your Google Business Profile. Mention Thriving Kids, create a Google Post, and keep encouraging reviews from existing families.
- Plan your content calendar. Three to five articles answering the questions your ideal Thriving Kids family is already searching. Start publishing now so you have traction by October.
- Check your Google Ads. If you’re running campaigns, talk to whoever manages them about capturing Thriving Kids search terms. Don’t wait for the traffic to arrive before you’re set up to capture it.
- Update your intake process. Make sure your team knows how to handle enquiries from pre-diagnosis families who don’t have a plan, a coordinator, or a clear sense of next steps.
The bottom line
There’s genuine uncertainty here, and I don’t think it helps anyone to pretend otherwise. The funding model under Thriving Kids is different to NDIS, the state-by-state delivery will vary, and the detail from government is still being worked out. Practices have every right to feel uncertain.
But uncertainty doesn’t mean inaction. The families are coming regardless, confused, early in the process, and looking for someone who can help them make sense of it. The question is whether your practice is the one they find.
If you’d like to talk through what this looks like for your specific situation, what’s already working in your marketing, where the gaps are, and what the highest-priority moves are before October, that’s exactly what a Clinic Growth Diagnostic is for.