The Australian Autism Alliance is holding a webinar on Tuesday 29 March (from 12.15pm-1.00pm) at which Chair of the Select Committee, Senator The Hon. Hollie Hughes, and Deputy Chair, Senator The Hon. Carol Brown will outline the report’s key findings and recommendations.
A4's Monique Blakemore will be chairing.
On 17/1/2022, A4 and a couple of our friends from the autism sector met (via video-link) with several officials from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. A4 provided a briefing document for the meeting (see below). Following is a summary report on the meeting.
Positives for A4 and the autism sector in Australia from the meeting were that
Subject:RE: Escalating risks for people with disability from Omicron and access to RAT and PCR tests [SEC=UNOFFICIAL]
Date:Wed, 5 Jan 2022 21:52:49 +0000
From:Lowe, Jamie <Jamie.Lowe@ndis.gov.au>
To: ...
CC:...
Dear Bob
Thank you for drawing this to my attention. We endeavour to align all our messaging to Health messaging to avoid confusion and will immediately review our website and social media content to ensure that the information we provide is up-to-date and aligned to Health messaging.
On Christmas Eve, the NDIS published its consultation outcome for young autistic children: see https://ndis.gov.au/community/we-listened/interventions-children-autism-spectrum-consultation-summary-report
Basically, the result of consultation was that:
A4's interim submission on the sustainability of the NDIS is available online.
The submission contains some recent data about the number of people diagnosed formally with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and receiving either an NDIS plan or Carer's Allowance (child). These diagnosis rates are often interpreted as indicators of autism prevalence in our community.
The following data is reported in Annex A.
On 21 October 2021, the Senate referred the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Participant Service Guarantee and Other Measures) Bill 2021 to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report.
A4 made a submission about:
A4's brief and somewhat rushed submission on proposed changes to the NDIS legislation is available below.
The government gave the disability sector insufficient time to respond to its proposed changes. Parts of the disability sector have received legal advice that the limited time allowed is disability discrimination. It certainly shows that the government's aim to build trust (following the Independent Assessments debacle) and to work with the sector is insubstantial.
The report at https://www.abc.net.au/radio/adelaide/p… is one-sided. It fails to speak to qualified or registered clinicians in Applied Behaviour Analysis. It is well known that any early intervention approach for autism does not suit all autistic children, but getting views from clinicians on one side of the debate is biased.
Please see below links to Easy Read COVID-19 vaccination resources now available:
A4 made a late submission in response to DSS's consultation on a National Disability Employment Strategy.
Basically, A4 felt that DSS's proposed holistic strategy to address disability employment over the next decade is the same as it was for the last decade: it's the same strategy expecting a different result. Rather thank acting on what they "think" might work, some of the 10 years could be used to determine reliably what does work for the various parts of the disability sector, then implement working approaches more widely.
