A 21-year-old autistic man from Perth has expanded into his first official business premises after finding his calling in life: professional paper shredding.

Brandon Tomic is nonverbal – he can speak for the purposes of requesting something, but not hold full conversations, and so his mother Simone Tomic asked if she could speak for him in this report.

After Brandon finished school at 18, Simone and her husband Rob wanted him to be able to work like any other adult.

It’s not as if Deborah Frith wants to put her eight-year-old son Jacob in a group home. She loves him deeply, and would give anything to protect him. But looking after a boy who has autism and severely challenging, often violent, behaviours has pushed the sole parent to her breaking point.

“I absolutely adore my child and I'd move hell and high water to keep him,” she says. “But it’s too much to sustain without the correct support. It’s a very unfortunate situation where you’re forced to suggest the things that come to you in your darkest moments.”

Fergus Hunter

At least 50,000 Australian children are completely detached from formal education at any one time, a new report has found, challenging schools and governments to face up to a "hidden disaster" that is structurally entrenched and poorly understood.

Robyn Wuth

Chair of the disability royal commission, Ronald Sackville QC, is hearing submissions in Queensland.

The mother of five disabled children says one was so scared of school he was given a photo of his mum and dad to take with him every day as a promise that he would come home.

She said some days her middle child's anxiety was so bad he would sit terrified in the car and refuse to go through the school gates, the disability commission was told during public hearings in Townsville on Tuesday.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons

 The NSW government has committed to trial giving schools disability funding on the basis of student need to reduce the prevalence of "diagnosis shopping".

The Sun-Herald reported in August that schools were pushing parents to obtain a diagnosis for their child that qualifies the school for extra funding to support the student with learning and behaviour.

First-line health professionals must vastly improve their communication and engagement with parents if they are to help address the growing prevalence of autism among children, say researchers from the University of South Australia.

Undertaking a meta-synthesis of 22 international studies, researchers consolidated the voices of 1178 parents advocating for their children with autism, finding that parents feel ignored and dismissed by medical practitioners as they navigate initial concerns for their child, further investigations, and finally, a formal diagnosis of autism.

Researchers say that medical practitioners need to adopt a family-focused approach to ensure that parents’ concerns, perspectives and observations are taken seriously so that their child has appropriate and timely access to early intervention services.