JACE Kirby is much like any other three-year-old boy – he loves to run, jump and eat ice cream.

However, autism had taken away his ability to interact meaningfully with people.

An innovative South Australian program is changing that, bringing speech, hugs, smiles and even bubbles into Jace’s life.

His Port Pirie family of five is the first to go through the recently expanded Autism Early Intervention Program now operating from a house at St Marys.

Jace’s mother Rebecca Blight, 32, said before the program Jace could only say about 10 words.

Currently, the most high-profile person on the autistic spectrum in Britain is a garden designer with flamboyantly pink hair and muscly, tattooed arms.

THE CENTERS FOR Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in 68 children in the US are on the autism spectrum, a number that stands in staggering contrast to a 1970 study that put the figure at one in 14,200. Some people believe we’re in the middle of an autism epidemic. But autism has always been part of the human experience, as journalist (and WIRED contributor) Steve Silberman shows in his new book,NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity. It’s only recently, he argues, that we have become properly aware of it.

Support for families of children with autism is often falling short of what is recommended by researchers, according to a leader in the field.

Professor Katrina Williams is director of Developmental Medicine at the Royal Children's Hospital (RCH) which provides care for children with a range of disabilities and conditions, including autism spectrum disorder.

She said parents of children with autism often take their child to see a range of experts, with little coordination between them.

This meant some families were being put under unnecessary stress.

The numbers of people with ­autism eligible for the $22 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme were “grossly underestimated” from the start.

When two Labor governments sat down to put flesh on the bones of an agreement to roll out the $22 billion national disability insurance scheme in South Australia the numbers of participants provided were demonstrably false.

The state insisted only 5085 places were needed. It could not afford to go any higher but it knew the federal government would bear the full cost of any overrun if the signed agreement was exceeded in any way.

Australian pediatricians are seeing more new patients with autism, accordin­g to a study that shows the proportion of first consult­ations taken up by the diagnosis has risen from 5 per cent to 15 per cent in just five years.

Associate professor Harriet Hiscock, from the Murdoch Child­rens Research Institute, yesterday said a follow-up to her previous study, which was published in theMedical Journal of Australia, found autism was taking up more of the pediatric workload.

In Sydney, Tina Lopez and her husband, Arron Dickens, are dipping into their savings to pay about $42,000 a year out of their pockets for their son James because a federal program stumps up only $12,000 over two years. In South Australia, where The Australian revealed children with autism now made up 46 per cent of the delayed, oversubscribed National Disability Insurance Scheme trial, the Andrews family had to fight to get a $40,000 package from the scheme for son David, 4.

Sean Parnell

Health Editor, Brisbane

Up to half of Australian children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder are expected to have higher needs warranting support from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, according to a leading academic.

Rick Morton

Social Affairs Reporter, Sydney

Children with autism-spectrum disorders have flooded the trial of the National Disability Insurance Scheme in South Australia and make up almost half of all participants, contributing to a blowout in the numbers which would be replicated across the country when the full scheme launches.