19/06/2025
How NDIS Travel Changes Are Hurting Clients
Lets Talk about one of our wonderful clients - Mary !
Mary lives in a small rural town, one hour and 15 minutes drive from our nearest office. She’s a vibrant, resilient woman who lives with multiple disabilities. She doesn’t drive, has no family support nearby, and relies on our team to visit her at home to provide the personalised support she needs to live safely and independently.
Until recently, we’ve been able to make that trip—despite the fact that we were only paid for 1 hour of travel (instead of 2.5 hours as a result of travel time limits). We did this because we believe in supporting our most vulnerable clients, no matter where they live. We could tighten our expenditure and make it work.
But the recent changes to NDIS pricing have made this now practically impossible.
Under the new rules, we can now only bill 50% of the travel fee we previously could. And we’re still capped at billing just 30 minutes each way, even if the journey takes an hour or more. For clients like Mary, this means it costs us more to provide the service than we are actually making - we’re effectively losing money every time we visit. And while we’re not in this to line our pockets, we do need to keep our service sustainable so we can continue to support people like Mary.
At Sunny Steps we don't believe the NDIS Rhetoric that this is to help our participants. It wont ! We see this for what it is - a direct attack on the quality and accessibility of disability services for those who are most vulnerable. The people who will be most affected are those who are already disadvantaged: these are rural clients, people with complex needs that require in home services and support, those without transport, those without family support, those who can not access tele-health and those who require a culturally appropriate service on site. And it also impacts kids - who need the service to be functionally play based, in their home or in their school. All of these people are the very people the NDIS was designed to protect.
We want to be clear: we are doing everything we can to continue supporting our clients in the community, but like many companies we are forced to consider our financial sustainability and our services will need to adapt. And this isn't our choosing or preference.
We will speak with each of our clients individually to work out sustainable plans, and we will always do our best to be there for you. But we need your help.
👉 Please sign the petition. The link is here : -
https://lnkd.in/gWMtSKmA
👉 Write to your local Member of Parliament.
👉 Share this post to raise awareness.
Together, we can push back against these changes and fight for a fairer, more inclusive NDIS—one that doesn’t leave people like Mary behind.
Thank you for standing with us.
Leah - & the Team at Sunny Steps.