Leading through administration, and what rebuilding really looks like

In December 2023, District 360 went into voluntary administration. A Deed of Company Arrangement followed, and in March 2026 that 24 month DOCA was effectuated. We came out the other side.

I would love to tell you that was the finish line. It was not. It was the point where the real work became visible. Since then, cleaning up our financials and rebuilding our structure has been my core focus. We are not there yet. But we are working our way there, one decision at a time.

I am writing this because founders in our sector rarely talk about the hard years in public. I think we should.

Administration is not the end of a business

There is a lot of shame attached to the word administration. I felt it. I still feel it some days.

But administration is a legal process designed to give a business room to restructure rather than collapse. For us, it created space to stop, look honestly at what was not working and agree a path forward with our creditors.

What it does not do is fix the underlying business. That part is on you.

What leading through it actually required

Telling the truth early. My team needed to hear it from me, not from a rumour. I told them what I knew, what I did not know and what I was doing about it. People can handle hard news. What they cannot handle is silence.

Keeping participants at the centre. Through all of it, the people we support still needed their supports delivered. That became our anchor. Every decision got tested against one question: does this keep our participants safe and supported?

Separating feelings from decisions. I had plenty of feelings. Fear, guilt, anger, exhaustion. I learned to let myself feel them and then make decisions on the numbers, the obligations and the evidence.

Accepting help. Administrators, accountants, lawyers, my leadership team. I could not carry this alone and I stopped pretending I could.

Coming out of a DOCA is the start, not the end

Effectuating a DOCA means the arrangement has been fulfilled. It does not mean the business is suddenly healthy.

For the last seven months, our focus has been on the unglamorous work:

1. Cleaning the financials. Reconciling everything, closing old loose ends and making sure our books tell the truth, every month, without heroics.
2. Rebuilding the structure. Looking at how our entities, governance and reporting fit together, so the group is built for where we are going rather than where we have been.
3. Tightening how we run. Better weekly reporting, clearer accountability and fewer surprises. If I cannot see a problem coming, I cannot lead through it.
4. Protecting the team. Rebuilding does not work if your best people burn out doing it.

None of this makes a good social media post. All of it matters more than anything that does.

If only the rules would stop moving

Here is the honest part. Rebuilding a business is hard. Rebuilding an NDIS business while the Scheme keeps changing underneath you is harder.

Since we entered administration, we have absorbed amendments to the NDIS Act, new rules about what can and cannot be funded, annual pricing changes, new registration expectations, and now the Future Generations reforms, including commissioned support coordination from 2028.

Each change on its own might be reasonable. Together, they mean you are trying to rebuild a house while someone keeps redrawing the plans. Every time we stabilise one part of the business, a policy shift moves the ground somewhere else.

I support a sustainable NDIS with real integrity. I want bad operators out of this sector as much as anyone. But constant change carries a cost, and it falls hardest on providers who are doing the work properly and trying to plan more than one quarter ahead.

What I have learned

Survival is a skill, not luck. It comes from facing reality quickly and acting on it.

Structure is kindness. Clear processes, clear roles and honest numbers protect your people far more than good intentions do.

Resilience is boring. It looks like reconciliations, board papers and weekly scorecards. It is rarely dramatic and it is always necessary.

You can rebuild in public. I used to think I had to have everything fixed before I could talk about it. I do not believe that anymore.

Where we are now

We are not finished. Some weeks it feels like two steps forward and one back, usually because the rules have changed again.

But we are still here. We are still supporting our participants. We have a leadership team that has been tested and held. And we are building something stronger than what we had before.

If you are a founder going through something similar, I want you to know that the hard years do not define you. What you build after them does.