The Federal Government has released the first draft of its new national autism strategy, in a bid to help the more than 200,000 Australians living with the condition.
The strategy aims to address the disadvantage and discrimination experienced by people with autism, based on factors including Aboriginality, age, ethnicity, gender identity, race, religion and sexual orientation.
It will use recommendations from the Senate’s Select Committee on Autism and the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.
A key recommendation of the committee’s report, which was presented in March 2022, was to develop a strategy that addressed the whole-of-life needs for people with autism.
Adults with autism experience more barriers to healthcare and have a life expectancy of more than 20 years shorter than the general population and are nine times more likely to die of suicide.
They are 2.5 times more likely to experience depression than the general population and are almost 8 times more likely to be unemployed.
The draft strategy includes specific recommendations to:
- Improve understanding and change attitudes towards people with autism and increase opportunities for social connections and peer support
- Improve Australian Government service delivery, communication, and information to meet their needs
- Increase meaningful employment opportunities (including business ownership, self-employment, entrepreneurship, and social enterprise)
- Improve the supports and services available to ensure they have choice and control over their education and careers
- Improve inclusive practices and the quality and accessibility of advocacy resources for students with autism across education settings, and their families, carers, and support networks
- Develop a set of best practice resources to support them and their families, carers and support networks through the identification, assessment, and diagnosis process
- Explore ways to improve access to primary care, including through the Medicare Benefits Schedule.
The new federal strategy has been designed to operate alongside existing state and territory autism strategies and the draft noted that “while more than one government can be involved in funding or delivering a service system, in most cases, one level of government has the main responsibility for service delivery.”
Professor Andrew Whitehouse, the Bennett Chair of Autism at the Telethon Kids Institute and lead author of the recently published ASD clinical guidelines, said that many of the thorny challenges that plague people with autism – reduced life expectancy, inadequate housing, educational exclusion and underachievement, unemployment and higher rates of physical and sexual abuse – could not be solved by one government alone.
“Even within a scope that is constrained to the roles and responsibilities of the federal government, there were a range of urgent issues not addressed within the draft,” Professor Whitehouse said in a recent article for The Conversation.