As far as job descriptions go it doesn't get much better than the role of psychologist Heath Fletcher.

Key points:

• Founded in Victoria to help children with autism, demand for The Lab classes is growing across Australia
• The Gold Coast branch has three classes with four mentors every Saturday
• Participants who have never had a friend before are able to make social connections and improve their social skills

"My job is to make smiles, so it really is the best job in the world," he said.

Micheal Sandbank, PhD¹; Kristen Bottema-Beutel, PhD²; Tiffany Woynaroski, PhD, CCC-SLP³

Author Affiliations

JAMA Pediatr. Published online November 9, 2020. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.4730

Andrew Beasley was quickly losing his cool. It was October 2015, and he was about two years into his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Fort Dix in New Jersey.

Beasley, then 32, had left his MP3 player on a charging station in the facility’s computer room, but when he went to retrieve it, it was gone. He thought he knew who had it and frantically started to look for the man.

“I’m forgetting politics. I’m forgetting everything. I’m just looking for my MP3 player,” says Beasley, who had been diagnosed with autism two years earlier.

Alex Turner-Cohen

An exhausted mum with a child with severe autism is calling on the Australian government to do more for children with special needs while in hotel quarantine.

Brenna Russell, 29, arrived in Sydney four days ago from Los Angeles and has been quarantining in Zetland’s Meriton Suites with her severely autistic son.

She has bruises on her arms from her son’s tantrums and she also fears for his safety.

Five year old Sebastien Russell has autism, ADHD, seizures, and a genetic variation of the NFIX gene that hasn’t been found before.

Joel Magarey

Andy Southam was a “sparky, chatty, funny” 24-year-old, his sister Judith McDonald says, when he left the family residence to enter a group home for men with intellectual disability in 1993.

“Back then,” she says, “he was interested in anything and everything.”

Joel Magarey

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