DAVID MARK: A new study indicates that the number of autism cases in Australia is increasing among younger children.

Researchers have found that 1.5 per cent of all 10 and 11 year olds have an autism spectrum condition, compared to 2.5 per cent of four and five year olds.

What's not clear is whether the condition is becoming more prevalent, or if it's simply being diagnosed more effectively.



Whatever the cause, experts say Australian schools need to prepare for an increase of autistic students.



Lucy Carter prepared this report.

MORE Australian children are being diagnosed with autism.

BUT researchers don't know if it's because the condition is becoming more prevalent or if autism is being diagnosed earlier.

The Murdoch Children's Research Institute also found the overwhelming majority of children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are boys.

The development of 10,000 children was studied in two separate waves at two yearly intervals.

Half were recruited into the study at birth and the others in preschool.

CHILDREN with disabilities are being let down by Tasmanian schools, says a report.

The Ministerial Taskforce report, obtained by the Mercury, urges the full take-up of the Gonski funding principles.

It outlines several concerns:

It takes a lot to wipe the smile from Gary Comerford's face.

For more than 20 years, he's lived happily in the government-run Fairweather House disability group home.

But Mr Comerford, who has an intellectual disability, says he was made to feel terrified in his own home when a support worker allegedly assaulted him after an argument about a key to the letterbox last year.

The alleged attack shocked his family. But it was the government's response that outraged them even more.

Nearly half of all Victoria's disability sector employees have witnessed their co-workers perpetrate acts of abuse, violence or neglect on people with disabilities living in their care, a survey reveals.

The findings have raised fresh concerns around the lack of qualifications needed to work in the industry, and warnings that abuse will only increase without reforms to "professionalise" the sector before it doubles in size under the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

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.