Jane Hansen

A LACK of options for their severely autistic children has forced a group of desperate parents to open their own school.

Julia Coorey, whose four-year-old son Michael is non-verbal and at the severe end of the spectrum, said her child — and many like him — needed one-on-one teaching if they were ever going to be “functioning human beings”.

“Our kids are all on the severe end of the spectrum,” Ms Coorey told The Sunday Telegraph.

by Julia Boyd

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.

Doug Dingwall

An appeals tribunal has called for Social Services Minister Dan Tehan to stop "haphazard" decision-making at the National Disability Insurance Agency blamed for delays in reviews involving support for a Canberra woman.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme participant, whose name was suppressed by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, asked the agency to review new plans that reduced her support compared to her first one.

Editorial: in our view, this story is biased against the autistic victims - see below.

Amber Wilson

A teenager accused of bashing an autistic boy alongside two spanner-wielding friends was "antagonised" on Instagram before the fight, a Melbourne court has been told.

The 15-year-old, who is on bail, is likely to avoid a criminal conviction if he is deemed suitable for a diversion program to take his matter out of the court system.

Aisha Dow

When she was a little girl, Lydia Zahra wanted to socialise just like everyone else, but she often struggled to understand the unwritten rules of communicating due to her autism.

“I would want to talk and want to talk about myself, but I didn’t really know how to ask people questions,” the 19-year-old said.

“It seemed a bit rude.”

Lydia Zahra was diagnosed with autism as a young child.

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.