Following a series of scandals in the United Kingdom over people with autism being held against their will and mistreated in hospitals, a watchdog group has issued a legal challenge to the government.

The incidents highlight that the entire system of care for people on the spectrum is in need of an overhaul, the challengers say.

Indiana Lysaght

Demeaning, degrading and disgusting is how a Kalgoorlie-Boulder mother has described her recent experience with Centrelink.

Despite a lifetime with a diagnosed disability, Jo Russell said she had to parade her daughter “like a monkey” during a disability support application.

Megan Russell was diagnosed with autism and an intellectual disability when she was two years old, which has left her in the full-time care of her mother

Melanie Whelan

THERE are bad days when Jae cannot leave the house because the prospect of navigating changing public transport to get to Melbourne is too much. Not to mention the bright, fluorescent lights in VLine carriages.

Jae is among the 40 per cent of austistic Australians who say they sometimes do not leave the house due to the prospect of being subject to discriminatory behaviour.

CONSTRUCTION begins this week for a $3.5 million world-class autism hub in Garran.

The sod turning ceremony for the AEIOU Garran Centre for Autism will be held tomorrow (February 26) to mark the beginning of construction for the early intervention facility supported, through capital funding, by the John James Foundation.

The centre will be the first of its kind in Canberra and will provide early intervention for about 40 children per year. It will also have the capacity for research and training.

Keren MacLennan, University of Reading

Shannon Jenkins

The New South Wales Public Service Commission has launched a pilot initiative designed to bring autistic and neurodiverse talents into state government agencies.

A partnership between the state government and the not-for-profit enterprise Specialisterne Australia, the Tailored Talent Program aims to address skill shortages in hard-to-fill public service roles such as cyber-security, software testing, data analytics, and coding.

Dan Carney

One of the most well-known psychological biases is the Dunning-Kruger effect: the tendency for individuals less skilled or knowledgeable in a particular area to overestimate their own performance. Now, a team of researchers from Miami University, Ohio, have offered the most robust evidence yet that this may apply to knowledge about autism — that what people think they know about the condition may not be that closely related to what they actually know.