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Almost two years after a referral, Mariam’s son is finally getting the help he needs

By bobb |

By Amber Schultz

It took Mariam Mukhtar nearly two years to have her teenage son Raamiz assessed for autism following a paediatric referral, and she fears the delay in getting him support has cost him his high school experience.

“Having support at the right time … that would have been a life-changing experience,” she said.

Disability advocate hits back at ‘misleading’ claims that NDIS funding is incentivising autism diagnoses

By bobb |

Stephanie Convery

Chief of Children and Young People with Disability Australia says families are simply seeking help for their children, with the NDIS ‘the only place to turn’

An advocate for people with disabilities has criticised as “unhelpful” and “misleading” reports suggesting families are pursuing autism diagnoses because they see the NDIS as a financial opportunity.

The NDIS is being rorted, but not by autistic people like me

By bobb |

Elena Filipczyk Autistic writer

It took me two years after my formal autism diagnosis to build up the courage to ask my kind, empathetic GP to help me access the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). I was mortified, but most of all, I felt like an impostor.

As my GP smiled warmly and took the paperwork off me, she admitted she’d never filled in an NDIS form before. I looked down at my feet and dug my nails into my palms. Was I wasting her time? Was I wasting government money?

Autistic drivers could find their licences in legal limbo depending on where they live after new standards introduced

By bobb |

Danielle Cahill

Thousands of autistic drivers could find their Australian licences are in legal limbo due to changes quietly made last year to the national standards that govern who is considered fit to drive.

The national 2022 Assessing Fitness to Drive standards are the first to list autism as a condition that "should be assessed individually", which may involve a practical assessment.

NDIA used the law to ‘exhaust’ participants

By bobb |

Rick Morton

A leaked review document shows the National Disability Insurance Agency used ‘legalistic brinkmanship’ to force disabled people to ‘bargain away their rights’.

A backlog of thousands of National Disability Insurance Scheme tribunal appeals was almost entirely artificial, not based on proper legislative interpretation and driven instead by “external pressures” to rein in costs of the scheme, according to independent reviewers chosen to work through the stricken cases.

Why do some children lose their autism diagnosis?

By bobb |
A study published 2 October in JAMA Pediatrics reports that 79 of 213 children who were diagnosed with autism at 12 to 36 months of age no longer met criteria for the condition at 5 to 7 years old. Spectrum asked autism researcher Deborah Fein, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, for her thoughts on the findings. In a 2013 study, Fein and her colleagues described a sample of people who lost their autism diagnosis.