Jake Dietsch

An aspiring Bouvard rapper who has racked up hundreds of followers in the past month says living with autism was a help, rather than a hindrance, to his creativity.

Lachlan Brownlie, 18, always received As in English, despite struggling in other subjects, and started experimenting with poetry at the age of just four.

“I started mixing words together and that’s how I developed my creativity,” he said.

Tita Smith

An Australian dad is pleading for help after his son was taken by child protection services because his autism was mistaken as a sign of psychological abuse.  

Conrad and Katya den Hertog lost their son Martin, now seven, to Dutch authorities during a night-time raid of their home in Amsterdam in February 2018.  

Following a series of scandals in the United Kingdom over people with autism being held against their will and mistreated in hospitals, a watchdog group has issued a legal challenge to the government.

The incidents highlight that the entire system of care for people on the spectrum is in need of an overhaul, the challengers say.

Indiana Lysaght

Demeaning, degrading and disgusting is how a Kalgoorlie-Boulder mother has described her recent experience with Centrelink.

Despite a lifetime with a diagnosed disability, Jo Russell said she had to parade her daughter “like a monkey” during a disability support application.

Megan Russell was diagnosed with autism and an intellectual disability when she was two years old, which has left her in the full-time care of her mother

Melanie Whelan

THERE are bad days when Jae cannot leave the house because the prospect of navigating changing public transport to get to Melbourne is too much. Not to mention the bright, fluorescent lights in VLine carriages.

Jae is among the 40 per cent of austistic Australians who say they sometimes do not leave the house due to the prospect of being subject to discriminatory behaviour.