Disability Discrimination Commissioner Alastair McEwin released a report today, A Future Without Violence: Quality, safeguarding and oversight to prevent and address violence against people with disability in institutional settings.

Commissioner McEwin said that violence against people with disability in institutional settings is a significant social policy issue in Australia.

Benjamin Millar

The peak body for people on the autism spectrum and their families* has criticised a TV program for airing confronting footage of an autistic boy acting violently towards his mother.

Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes screened a report on Sunday night featuring Max Whelan, a 12-year-old boy with severe non-verbal autism who lives with his family at Mt Martha on the Mornington Peninsula.

Rick Morton

A list of psychologists ­approved by the federal government to offer autism diagnosis and treatment services disappeared from the ­internet around the same time the National Disability Insurance Agency began telling people their diagnoses were invalid unless performed by a clinical psychologist.

The Autism Spectrum Disorder practitioner list, maintained by the Australian Psychological Society as a federal government requirement, included psychologists from a range of fields, not just clinical professionals.

In an extraordinary decision, Administrative Appeals Tribunal deputy president Gary Humphries has attacked the National Disability Insurance Agency for tearing through legal resources simply because it has such a “haphazard” approach to making decisions.

A Melbourne man with a profound intellectual disability and autism, who was accused of assault and then left in a high-security prison because there was nowhere else for him to go, has had his charges dropped by Victorian prosecutors.

Francis was sent to prison because no service provider under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) would take him.

Andrew Cashin, Southern Cross University

As a society, we’ve come a long way in our understanding of the challenges people with autism face with social communication. But there is a large gap in our understanding of another cluster of behaviours that form part of an autism diagnosis: restrictive and repetitive behaviours and interests (RRBs).

Luke Michael

The federal government has announced the establishment of an Autism Advisory Group, but suspicions have been raised that the group’s agenda is about excluding people with autism from the National Disability Insurance Scheme.