Urgent need for cause of death reporting system for Australians with intellectual disability

By bobb |

DAN WHEELAHAN

The deaths of more than 700 Australian adults with an intellectual disability could have been avoided with more appropriate health care and monitoring, a UNSW study has revealed.

Research by UNSW has found that while Down syndrome itself doesn’t cause death, it is still coded that way in a flawed classification system. Photo: Shutterstock.

NDIS: Federal Government announces independent review of National Disability Insurance Scheme

By bobb |

Henry Belot

The Federal Government has announced an independent review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to examine overall costs, value for money and its long-term sustainability.

Treasurer Scott Morrison announced the Productivity Commission review on Friday afternoon with a position paper to be released in May, followed by a report in September.

incredible numbers of 'school students with disability'

By bobb |

Bob Buckley

Recently, the Education Council released its first report based on data collected for the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data: School Students with Disability.

The report describes 18% of school students as having disability. This rate of disability among school students in the major states (see Table 3 in the report) aligns remarkably closely with the average disability rate (18%) in the Australian population. But this level of disability is far more students than other reports of children with disability.

The controversy over autism’s most common therapy

By bobb |

Applied behavioral analysis is the most widely used therapy for autism, but some people say its drills and routines are cruel, and its aims misguided.

BY ELIZABETH DEVITA-RAEBURN

When Lisa Quinones-Fontanez’s son Norrin was diagnosed with autism at age 2, she and her husband did what most parents in their position do — they scrambled to form a plan to help their child.

AMA: Early diagnosis and intervention essential for children with ASD

By bobb |

The AMA today called for coordinated action to speed up the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in children, and to provide early intervention therapies to give children with ASD the best outcomes possible.

AMA President, Dr Michael Gannon, also called on the Federal Government to rule out any future narrowing of the eligibility requirements for people with ASD to access the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).

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