Belinda Hitchcock knew instinctively something was different with her baby.

Her placid son Bradley, who started talking when he was 18 months old, had regressed to incoherent babbling. By the time Bradley was two he had lost the ability to speak. 

His mother was fobbed off again and again by doctors as she desperately tried to find answers. 

Jane Hansen

PARENTS of autistic children are spending millions of dollars a year on bogus treatments in the hope of a miracle “cure”.

Now there are fears the National Disability Insurance Scheme will be ripped off by these charlatans, who are ­already preying on desperate parents.

Diane Verstappen from Aspire Early Intervention, an evidence-based program, said parents with self-managed funds from the NDIS would be a prime target.

The centre behind an successful early intervention program for autistic children in Tasmania's north-west hopes to expand its services to other parts of the state.

University research has found children at the Autism Specific Early Learning and Care Centre in Burnie have experienced big improvements.

Data collected from 98 children over four years showed most had improved in behaviour, communication, language development and motor skills.

The centre has been running for the last six years and is the only regional autistic learning centre in Australia.

David Roy, University of Newcastle

Governments in Australia, New Zealand and the UK are failing children with disabilities by not providing necessary learning support and by allowing issues to permeate without intervening.

NATASHA BITA

State Education Minister ­Adrian Piccoli, a Nationals MP, said the federal government’s ­refusal to fully fund the Gonski ­reforms, worth $5 billion to NSW schools, was like stopping a new railway line midway through construction. “It’s like building a train line that costs $5bn and takes six years to build, but you stop building it halfway through,’’ he said.

“You’ve already spent $2bn or $3bn and no passengers have travelled on it.

For the first 14 and a half years of Gordy's life, Evan and Dara Baylinson had no reason to believe their son could comprehend anything they said: He had never spoken, and he couldn't really emote. They worried aloud about his future, not filtering what they said, because they didn't think he understood.

But Gordy was absorbing everything.

"My brain, which is much like yours, knows what it wants and how to make that clear," he wrote in a letter he sent to a police officer. "My body, which is much like a drunken, almost six-foot toddler, resists."

As the population of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder keeps growing, so does the number of people with that diagnosis who aren't finding employment.

Though many young adults on the spectrum are considered high functioning, recent research shows 40 percent don't find work — a higher jobless rate than people with other developmental disabilities experience.

by  KATY HALL

Gold Logie winner Waleed Aly has opened up about his son Zayd’s autism, describing the nine-year-old as a “lovely little man”.

Paula Goodyer

"Boy recovers from autism after going gluten free."

"Gluten- free casein-free diet no remedy for autism."

Welcome to the conflicted world of diet and autism where opinion over the benefits of removing gluten (the protein in wheat, rye and barley) and casein (the protein in milk) from the diet is divided. Depending on which website you click on, the gluten-free, casein-free diet is either saviour or undiluted snake oil.