People with autism have difficulty getting a job. The letter below describes the experience of one person and his carer on reaching a point just 2 years after leaving school. 

This experience shows that the Commonwealth Government's Disability Employment Scheme (DES) is largely intractable. The Australian Bureau of Statistics describes its abysmal outcomes for people with autism/ASD (link here): 

In 2012, the labour force participation rate for people with autism was 42%. This compares with 53% labour force participation rate for people with disabilities and 83% for people without disabilities.

The 41.2% of people with autism in the labour market in 2012 experienced 23% unemployment (there is improvement since 2009 when labour force participation was just 34% and unemployment was 41%).

For children with autism/ASD, Australia lags far behind the USA. Australians like to think their health system is superior to the US health system ... but not so for the growing number of children diagnosed with ASD in Australia.

The US Government made it clear that US "states must cover all medically necessary services for children, including services to address ASD" (see http://www.medicaid.gov/Federal-Policy-Guidance/Downloads/FAQ-09-24-2014.pdf). 

A4 submitted the report below to the Australian Government's Review of Australia’s Welfare System.

A4's report highlights that ... 

• people with autism want to work and are capable of working. The problem is that employers, including governments in Australia, simply do not employ people with autism,
• describing people with disability as "leaners", or as "rorters, bludgers, slackers, etc." does not improve employment outcomes,
• growth in Disability Support Pensions is not even as big as growth in autism diagnoses ... so there is no real welfare crisis, but growth in the number of people diagnosed with autism deserves much more attention, and
• Australia's welfare compared to GDP is below average for the OECD so Australia's welfare system is sustainable at present and is not heading towards being unsustainable, as the current Government claims.

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) is ignoring expert advice and existing government policy on early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Instead, the NDIA adopted a generic and often inappropriate approach that does not address the distinct needs of children with ASD.

The Department of Health advised families* in 2006 that children with ASD need “best practice” intensive ASD-specific early intervention. Later, the Department of Social Security (formerly FaHCSIA) effectively asked ASD experts “are you sure … and what about just 'good' practice?”. The experts responded pretty much “Yep, we are sure … and 'good practice' isn't much different from 'best practice'” (links* to the report are here MS Word & PDF and the Guidelines for Good practice 2012 MS Word & PDF ... webpage here).