When Choice and Control Collides With Child Safety: A Conversation Queensland’s NDIS Sector Needs to Have

There is a difficult conversation that I believe Queensland’s NDIS sector needs to have.

Are disability providers sometimes hesitant to make Child Safety reports because they are worried about damaging the relationship with a participant or their family and potentially losing that participant?

There is currently no Queensland data that can answer that question.

We do not know how many Child Safety reports are made by NDIS providers each year. We do not know how many participants or nominees discontinue services following a report. We also do not have evidence demonstrating that financial considerations are causing NDIS providers to underreport child safety concerns.

Those limitations need to be made clear from the beginning.

However, the absence of evidence does not mean we should avoid examining the question.

Queensland has tens of thousands of children receiving NDIS supports. Children with disability are significantly represented within the child protection system, and disability workers can occupy a unique position in a child’s life. They may spend hours inside the family home, sometimes multiple times each week, and may observe circumstances that teachers, doctors and other professionals never see.

At the same time, the NDIS is built around participant choice and control. Participants and their representatives can change providers, and providers operate within a market where maintaining participant relationships directly affects their income.

In my professional experience, I believe this creates a potential conflict that deserves considerably more attention.

Child safety must never become secondary to participant retention.

The Scale of Childhood Disability Within the NDIS

Children represent a substantial proportion of the NDIS.

As at 31 March 2026, there were 167,787 children younger than nine with an approved NDIS plan nationally. The NDIA also reported that 67% of participants entering the Scheme during the 2025 to 2026 financial year to that point were children younger than 15 (National Disability Insurance Agency [NDIA], 2026).

Queensland alone had approximately 69,748 NDIS participants aged 0 to 14 at 31 March 2026.

This is not a small population.

Disability providers across Queensland are consequently working with tens of thousands of children and their families.

This becomes particularly important when disability is considered alongside what we know about child protection.

Children With Disability Are Particularly Vulnerable

Children with disability are significantly represented within Queensland’s child protection system.

Queensland data has repeatedly shown that approximately three in ten children in foster, kinship and residential care have a recorded disability.

As at 30 September 2024, 3,493 children and young people in these forms of care had a recorded disability, representing approximately 28.7% of the population (Queensland Family and Child Commission [QFCC], 2025a).

The QFCC’s Children in Care Census has also identified extremely high levels of diagnosed or suspected disability among children entering care. Depending upon their age when entering care, approximately 34% to 46% were recorded as having diagnosed or suspected disability (QFCC, 2025b).

National evidence similarly indicates that people with disability experience some forms of childhood abuse at substantially higher rates than people without disability.

The Disability Royal Commission also concluded that people with disability experience disproportionately high levels of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation (Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, 2023).

This makes safeguarding within disability services particularly important.

What Queensland’s Child Safety Reporting Data Shows

Between 14 April 2025 and 31 March 2026, Queensland Child Safety recorded more than 100,000 household intakes concerning children and families, with approximately 30,000 progressing to notifications requiring a Child Safety response.

Schools, health professionals and police were among the largest sources of notifications.

Non government organisations also made thousands of notifications.

However, there is a significant limitation.

Queensland’s publicly available reporting data does not separately identify NDIS providers.

An NDIS provider may potentially fall within a broader category such as a non government organisation or another professional category, depending upon the notifier and circumstances.

This means we cannot answer a surprisingly basic safeguarding question:

How many Child Safety concerns are being reported by Queensland NDIS providers each year?

Considering the number of children receiving disability supports and their recognised vulnerability to abuse and neglect, I believe this is information that should be visible.

NDIS Workers Are Not Automatically Mandatory Reporters

Another important distinction is frequently misunderstood.

Working within the NDIS does not automatically make someone a mandatory reporter under Queensland’s Child Protection Act 1999.

Queensland’s mandatory reporting framework applies to specified professionals and roles, including doctors, registered nurses, teachers, certain police officers, child advocates and particular early childhood professionals (Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety, 2026a).

An NDIS support worker, Support Coordinator or Recovery Coach does not automatically become a mandatory reporter simply because they provide disability supports.

An individual NDIS worker may, of course, separately be a mandatory reporter because of another professional qualification or position.

But this distinction should not be interpreted as meaning other disability workers have no safeguarding responsibilities.

Any person can raise concerns with Child Safety where they reasonably suspect a child may need protection.

There is also a separate Queensland criminal law obligation that is important to acknowledge. Under the Criminal Code Act 1899, adults have obligations to report certain sexual offending against children to police unless a reasonable excuse applies. For these provisions, the law can also extend to some young people under 18 with an impairment of the mind.

Queensland Child Safety also provides important protections to people who make reports honestly and reasonably, including protections concerning notifier identity and legal liability. These protections are not absolute, and limited statutory exceptions can apply (Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety, 2026b).

The NDIS itself imposes additional safeguarding expectations.

The NDIS Code of Conduct applies to both registered and unregistered NDIS providers and workers and requires providers to respond appropriately to safety concerns and incidents. However, registered NDIS providers have additional regulatory obligations, including formal incident management requirements and mandatory notification of specified reportable incidents to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.

The question therefore should not simply be:

“Am I legally a mandatory reporter?”

It should also be:

“What do I need to do to protect this child?”

Should NDIS Workers Be Mandatory Reporters?

This raises a bigger policy question for me: why aren’t all NDIS workers who provide services to children mandatory reporters in Queensland?

Queensland has tens of thousands of children receiving NDIS supports. Many of these children have significant disabilities, communication difficulties or a high level of dependence on the adults around them. We also know that children with disability are disproportionately represented within Queensland’s child protection system.

Yet whether a worker has mandatory reporting obligations can depend heavily on their profession or the regulatory category they fall within.

I believe we need to reconsider that approach.

Rather than asking only, “What qualification does this worker hold?”, perhaps we should also be asking, “Who does this worker support, and what level of access do they have to vulnerable people?”

A disability support worker may spend significantly more time inside a child’s home than a teacher, nurse or doctor. They may assist with showering, dressing, meals, medication, community access and other highly personal activities. They may observe the child and their family several times each week.

Yet simply being an NDIS support worker does not automatically make that person a mandatory reporter under Queensland’s child protection legislation.

I believe that deserves serious policy consideration.

Other Australian Jurisdictions Already Take a Broader Approach

Queensland would not be breaking new ground by expanding mandatory reporting obligations for disability workers who support children.

New South Wales already takes a broader approach.

Under New South Wales legislation, a person who provides disability services wholly or partly to children through their professional work or paid employment is captured by mandatory reporting requirements. New South Wales guidance specifically identifies disability support workers and personal care workers as mandatory reporters (Department of Communities and Justice, 2025).

South Australia also adopts a broader model. Under the current Children and Young People (Safety) Act 2017, mandatory reporting requirements can apply to employees and volunteers directly providing certain health, welfare, education, child care, residential and related services to children, including roles that may encompass disability support (Department for Child Protection South Australia, 2026).

South Australia has also passed the Children and Young People (Safety and Support) Act 2025. However, as at August 2026, that Act has not yet commenced, so the 2017 Act remains the operative legislation for mandatory reporting.

The Northern Territory goes further again.

There, mandatory child protection reporting obligations apply to every person where the relevant statutory threshold is met (Northern Territory Government, 2026).

Victoria also provides an important safeguarding comparison. While disability workers are not automatically mandatory Child Protection reporters simply because they work in disability services, Victoria has separate mandatory notification requirements concerning unsafe conduct by disability workers. These obligations apply regardless of who funds the service (Victorian Disability Worker Commission, 2026).

These differences raise an obvious policy question for Queensland.

If a disability support worker providing services to a child in New South Wales can be a mandatory reporter because of the nature of the service they provide, why should the same type of worker supporting the same vulnerable population across the Queensland border be treated differently?

The broader issue is not simply one of geography.

It is about what safeguarding obligations should follow the work.

When safeguarding systems are designed primarily around professional qualifications, registration status and regulatory categories, there is a risk that we lose sight of the most important consideration: the vulnerability of the people receiving the service.

A child does not become less vulnerable because their support worker is employed by an unregistered provider.

Abuse does not become less serious because the person who witnesses the warning signs does not hold a particular professional qualification.

And a person’s right to protection should not depend upon which regulatory category their provider happens to fall within.

With the number of children receiving NDIS supports, I believe Queensland should consider whether people providing NDIS supports directly to children should have specific mandatory child protection reporting responsibilities, supported by appropriate training and clear reporting thresholds.

More broadly, I believe safeguarding reform should increasingly focus on who we are supporting and the risks they face, rather than simply who is providing the service and what registration or qualification they hold.

Because when safeguarding responsibilities fall between professional, regulatory and registration boundaries, vulnerable people can fall between those boundaries too.

Queensland’s Safeguarding Framework Has Recently Become Stronger

Queensland has recently introduced another significant layer of child safeguarding.

The Child Safe Organisations Act 2024 established Queensland’s Child Safe Organisations system and Reportable Conduct Scheme.

The Reportable Conduct Scheme commenced on 1 July 2026.

Organisations covered by the scheme have obligations concerning allegations of child abuse and child related misconduct involving their workers and volunteers. Reportable conduct can include sexual offences or misconduct, ill treatment, neglect, violence and significant emotional or psychological harm (QFCC, 2026a).

Where an organisation becomes aware of a reportable allegation, the head of the organisation must provide an initial notification to the QFCC within three business days, followed by further reporting requirements (QFCC, 2026b).

Within its first three weeks of operation, Queensland had already received 205 reportable conduct notifications. More than 170 cases had been opened and more than 60 involved alleged criminal conduct referred to Queensland Police (Queensland Government, 2026).

This demonstrates both the scale of safeguarding concerns and what can happen when organisations are provided with clearer reporting structures.

The Commercial Conflict We Need to Discuss

The NDIS is deliberately built around choice and control.

That principle is fundamental to the rights of people with disability and should remain so.

Participants should be able to choose who provides their supports and change providers when those services are not appropriate.

But we should also be willing to acknowledge an unintended consequence of that market structure.

An NDIS provider’s income depends upon participants continuing to purchase its services.

If a provider makes a Child Safety report concerning a participant’s family, that family may be angry. Trust may deteriorate. A complaint may be made against the provider. The participant or nominee may decide to discontinue the service and engage somebody else.

That creates a potential financial consequence for doing something that may be necessary to protect a child.

To be clear, I have not identified Queensland evidence demonstrating how frequently this happens.

I cannot say that a particular percentage of providers fail to report because they are worried about losing participants.

What I can say, based on my professional experience working within the sector, is that I believe providers can be more hesitant to make Child Safety reports when they fear losing the participant or damaging the relationship with the family.

That is my professional observation, not a statistical finding.

But when the system contains an obvious potential conflict between commercial interests and safeguarding responsibilities, we should be willing to investigate whether that conflict is influencing professional decision making.

Choice and Control Cannot Mean Silence

Choice and control is an essential principle of the NDIS.

But choice and control cannot mean that providers ignore reasonable concerns about the safety of a child.

A child cannot exercise meaningful choice and control over whether their parent changes disability providers.

A young child may not be capable of recognising neglect.

A child with significant communication disability may be unable to tell somebody what is happening inside their home.

Some children depend entirely upon the adults surrounding them to recognise that something is wrong.

That makes the adults entering those homes incredibly important.

Support workers may see whether there is food available.

They may notice unexplained injuries.

They may observe changes in behaviour.

They may see the condition of the home.

They may witness interactions between children and caregivers.

They may recognise that a child regularly arrives without appropriate hygiene, clothing, medication or other necessities.

Most importantly, they may see these things repeatedly.

Queensland Has Already Seen What Missed Opportunities Can Look Like

The experiences of two Queensland brothers referred to as Kaleb and Jonathon provide an important example.

Both children lived with significant disability and had extensive contact with services.

School staff sometimes provided food, clothing and assistance with basic personal hygiene. The Department of Education subsequently accepted that this level of intervention indicated staff were aware the children were experiencing neglect at home.

Despite years of concerns, the school made only one student protection report to Child Safety.

Subsequent reviews identified several occasions when Child Safety reports should have been made (Queensland Ombudsman, 2025).

The issue was not that nobody cared about these children.

People were helping them.

But providing immediate assistance did not necessarily address the underlying safeguarding risk.

The Queensland Ombudsman’s investigation identified areas requiring improvement in recognising neglect, recording suspicions of harm and identifying cumulative harm (Queensland Ombudsman, 2025).

This provides an important lesson for disability services.

Giving a child dinner because there is no food at home is support.

Helping them shower because they repeatedly arrive unwashed is support.

Providing clean clothes is support.

But if these circumstances repeatedly indicate possible neglect or significant harm, continually addressing the immediate problem without considering the underlying safeguarding concern may not be enough.

Sometimes helping means escalating.

Reporting Does Not Automatically Mean Removing a Child

This is another misconception that needs challenging.

Making a Child Safety report is not the same as asking the government to remove a child from their family.

Queensland’s child protection system includes assessment, family support, referrals, safety planning and intervention designed to address risks to children.

Removing a child is one potential statutory response in circumstances where the required legal thresholds are reached.

Queensland’s current intake model also includes early intervention pathways and referrals to family support services where concerns do not require a statutory investigative response.

A report can therefore become an opportunity for additional support, assessment and oversight.

That distinction matters enormously.

The goal should not be to unnecessarily separate families.

The goal should be to identify risk early enough that children can be safe and families can receive the support they need.

Why This Issue Is Personal to Me

My passion for child and family support is not purely professional.

As a young person, there were times when I was let down by the systems that were supposed to protect and support me.

But there were also people who advocated for me.

People raised concerns.

People reported.

People made difficult decisions because they believed they were doing the right thing for me and my family.

Looking back, I believe those interventions prevented some of the outcomes and struggles my family experienced from becoming even more severe.

That experience has influenced how I approach safeguarding today.

I understand why professionals can hesitate.

Nobody wants to unnecessarily cause distress to a family.

Nobody wants to damage a therapeutic relationship.

Nobody wants to make an allegation that turns out to have another explanation.

And families raising children with disability can already experience enormous pressure, judgement and scrutiny.

Disability itself is not evidence of neglect.

Poverty is not automatically neglect.

A parent having disability or mental health difficulties does not automatically make their child unsafe.

A messy house does not automatically mean a child needs statutory intervention.

Safeguarding requires professional judgement, curiosity, appropriate training and consideration of the whole situation.

But fear of upsetting somebody cannot be the deciding factor either.

Neither can money.

We Need Better Data

One of the clearest findings from researching this issue is actually how much we do not know.

Queensland should be able to answer questions such as:

How many Child Safety notifications originate from NDIS providers?

What types of concerns are disability providers reporting?

How frequently are children receiving NDIS supports also involved with Child Safety?

Are disability providers reporting at rates consistent with the vulnerability of the population they support?

How confident are NDIS workers in recognising and reporting abuse, neglect and cumulative harm?

Do providers believe making a Child Safety report could result in losing a participant?

How frequently are provider relationships terminated following safeguarding reports?

Without this information, we cannot properly determine whether the market structure of the NDIS is influencing safeguarding decisions.

The answer may ultimately demonstrate that my concerns are unfounded.

If so, that would be valuable evidence.

But given the vulnerability of the children involved, it is a question worth answering rather than assuming.

What Needs to Change?

I believe Queensland’s disability sector should move toward a culture where safeguarding decisions are clearly separated from commercial considerations.

Providers working with children should have strong child safeguarding policies.

Workers should receive practical training in recognising abuse, neglect, domestic and family violence, cumulative harm and grooming.

They should understand the difference between mandatory reporting, Child Safety notifications, NDIS reportable incidents and Queensland’s Reportable Conduct Scheme.

Workers should know what to document, who to contact and when concerns need to be escalated.

I also believe Queensland should seriously consider whether NDIS workers who provide direct supports to children should become mandatory reporters.

Other Australian jurisdictions already demonstrate that broader models are possible.

New South Wales directly captures disability workers providing services to children. South Australia uses a broader service based model, and the Northern Territory imposes mandatory reporting responsibilities on every person where the legal threshold is met.

Queensland should examine whether its current profession based model remains appropriate for a disability sector supporting such a large and vulnerable population of children.

Safeguarding obligations should increasingly reflect the vulnerability of the people being supported and the level of access workers have to their lives, not simply the qualification a worker holds or whether a provider sits inside a particular registration category.

The same principle should also guide NDIS safeguarding reform.

A registered and an unregistered provider may support the same participant, perform similar work and witness the same serious safeguarding concerns, yet their formal regulatory reporting obligations to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission are not identical.

That difference deserves scrutiny.

Most importantly, organisational leadership must make one principle unmistakably clear:

No participant relationship is worth compromising the safety of a child.

If making an appropriate report means losing a participant, then losing that participant cannot be treated as a failure.

Sometimes doing your job properly means making a decision that somebody does not like.

Conclusion

The NDIS has transformed the lives of many children with disability and their families.

Choice and control has been an important part of that transformation.

But every system needs to be willing to examine its unintended consequences.

Queensland has tens of thousands of children receiving NDIS supports. Children with disability are disproportionately represented within child protection populations. Disability workers can have extraordinary access to children’s everyday lives, yet we cannot currently determine from publicly available Queensland data how frequently the NDIS sector is reporting child protection concerns.

I believe we need to ask why.

I also believe we need to examine whether the commercial relationship between participants and providers creates hesitation when difficult safeguarding decisions need to be made.

And we need to ask whether Queensland’s mandatory reporting framework has kept pace with the realities of the NDIS.

Other jurisdictions have already recognised that the nature of the service a worker provides can be just as important as their professional title.

That is not an accusation against the NDIS sector.

It is a safeguarding question.

And when children are involved, we should be prepared to ask difficult questions.

Choice and control matters.

Family preservation matters.

Provider relationships matter.

But the safety of a child must always matter more. Written by Joe Horvat with the support of AI. 23/08/2026

References

Department for Child Protection South Australia. (2026). The role of mandated reporters. Government of South Australia. https://www.childprotection.sa.gov.au/report-suspected-harm/process-for-mandated-notifiers/the-role-of-mandated-reporters

Department of Communities and Justice. (2025). Who are mandatory reporters? New South Wales Government. https://dcj.nsw.gov.au/children-and-families/protecting-our-kids/mandatory-reporters/who-are-mandatory-reporters.html

Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety. (2026a). Mandatory reporting. Queensland Government. https://www.families.qld.gov.au/our-work/child-safety/about-child-protection/mandatory-reporting

Department of Families, Seniors, Disability Services and Child Safety. (2026b). Receive information from the notifier. Queensland Government, Child Safety Practice Manual. https://cspm.csyw.qld.gov.au/procedures/receive-and-respond-at-intake/new-receive-information-from-the-notifier

National Disability Insurance Agency. (2026). Quarterly report to disability ministers: 31 March 2026. Australian Government. https://www.ndis.gov.au/media/8641/download

National Disability Insurance Scheme Quality and Safeguards Commission. (2026). NDIS Code of Conduct. Australian Government. https://www.ndiscommission.gov.au/rules-and-standards/ndis-code-conduct

Northern Territory Government. (2026). Mandatory reporting of harm and exploitation of children. Northern Territory Government.

Queensland Family and Child Commission. (2025a). Annual report 2024–25. Queensland Government.

Queensland Family and Child Commission. (2025b). Children in Care Census 2024: Sector insights. Queensland Government.

Queensland Family and Child Commission. (2026a). Guide to Queensland’s Reportable Conduct Scheme. Queensland Government. https://www.qfcc.qld.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-03/guideline-cso-reportable-conduct-scheme.pdf

Queensland Family and Child Commission. (2026b). How to report: Reportable Conduct Scheme. Queensland Government. https://www.qfcc.qld.gov.au/childsafe/reportable-conduct-scheme/what-does-organisation-need-do/how-report

Queensland Family and Child Commission. (2026c). The child protection system. Queensland Government. https://www.qfcc.qld.gov.au/children-and-families/child-rights/child-protection-system

Queensland Government. (2026, July 24). Reportable Conduct Scheme delivers early results to protect children. Ministerial Media Statements.

Queensland Ombudsman. (2025). Preventing harm to children with disability in Queensland: Report 1, Department of Education. Queensland Government.

Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. (2023). Final report: Volume 3, Nature and extent of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. Commonwealth of Australia.

Victorian Disability Worker Commission. (2026). Mandatory notifications. Victorian Government. https://www.vdwc.vic.gov.au/notifications