Concluding Observations on Australia and the UN CRPD, Sep-2019

By convenor |

Dear Mr Basharu

Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia, known as A4, observes that your Committee published its “Concluding Observations: UN Report on Australia’s Review of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD), 24 September 2019”. A4 greatly appreciates your efforts to hold Australia to its international obligations in relation to people with disabilities.

A4 is puzzled and disappointed that your Concluding Observations make no reference to autistic Australians. Excluding autistic Australians from your observations leaves them feeling that a crucial human rights body fails to recognise their needs and right.

Leave No Autistic Mother Behind: Autism and Motherhood – Experiences, Challenges and Positive Strategies (COSP12 Side Event)

By bobb |

A4 and AFDO represented in UN Side Event

13 Jun 2019 -  Autism is a partially genetic, lifelong neurodevelopmental difference, yet there is limited research examining parenting in autistic mothers.

This side-event will discuss, from both an academic and an experiential point of view – including through 2 panellists who would be speaking both as researchers and as autistic mothers – the experiences of autistic mothers in areas related to parenthood: pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period, self-perception of parenting strengths and weaknesses, communication with professionals in relation to one's child, and the social experience of motherhood, including disclosing one’s diagnosis of autism in parenting contexts.

Hans Asperger 'actively cooperated with Nazi child euthanasia program', study finds

By bobb |

Hans Asperger's name may become "mud" and be scrapped from the medical lexicon following new evidence he was an active Nazi collaborator, an autism history expert says.

Key points:

  • New study finds clinician cooperated with child euthanasia program
  • Finds Asperger benefited from relationship with Nazis
  • Challenges long-running narrative about Asperger

A new study, published in the journal of Molecular Autism this week by medical historian Herwig Czech, was the result of eight years of research and drew on previously unseen documents, including Asperger's personnel files and the clinical assessments he wrote on his patients.

Largest study to date finds autism alone does not increase risk of violent offending

By bobb |

Conditions such as ADHD which co-occur with autism may increase risk

A diagnosis of autism alone does not increase the risk of violent offending suggests a study published in the June 2017 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP).

The study analysed data from 295,734 individuals in Stockholm County, Sweden, of whom 5,739 had a diagnosis of autism. The researchers tracked these individuals for violent crime convictions between ages 15 to 27 years using records from the Swedish National Crime Register.

Cambridge professor fears basic human rights of autistic people not being met

By bobb |

Prof Baron-Cohen spoke out about his fears in a speech while in New York

A Cambridge professor fears the basic human rights of autistic people are not being met.

In a speech marking Autism Awareness Week, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, told the United Nations in New York today, that even with the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities having been adopted in 2006, people with autism still do not enjoy human rights to the same extent as everyone else.

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