Page 1398 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 April 2013
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Children with autism often also present with challenging behaviours for parents to manage—repetitive behaviours, rituals that must be followed, poor play skills, obsession about specific objects or routines and limited food choices and aversions to particular textures or tastes. And perhaps what can be the most heartbreaking concern early on is that children with autism often find it difficult to engage warmly and share smiles and laughs and hugs with those who love them the most.
Of course, all of these behaviours can and do improve, but it is their unique patterns that have driven the development of autism-specific intervention, intervention that acknowledges and works with the characteristic strengths and weaknesses often found in children with autism. Disability services have had to adjust and adapt to ensure that they can respond appropriately to an increased number of children being diagnosed over the past decade. Here in the ACT there were not really any ASD-specific preschool and school-based education units 15 years ago. Now there are both, and they have grown in number.
The federal government’s funding, through the helping children with autism announced in 2008, acknowledged this growing need in the community for support to access early intervention, providing up to $12,000 per child once a diagnosis has been made. There are more community advocacy and support groups and, hopefully, a growing community awareness.
While acknowledging the uniqueness of ASD and the requirement for specific intervention, the problem with supporting Mr Dozspot’s motion is twofold. Firstly, as I indicated earlier, it is an expensive policy to put on the table in a motion. Indeed, implementation of the Liberal’s election policy is, according to Treasury, a lot more expensive than the Liberals put forward in their election campaign—indeed, almost double. Treasury costed the proposal for a new autism-specific school for 40 students at around $9.3 million compared to the costing put forward by the Liberal Party of around $4.7 million. That is obviously one issue of concern.
But my major objection is that while a motion such as this is a good way to get a conversation started, it is not a good way to decide the best service delivery for a particular constituency. While Mr Doszpot puts in his motion that the policy for a new school has widespread support from the community, I would want to see more evidence that this is what the parents of children with autism want for their children. It may well be that some parents want an autism-specific school—I am sure there are some and I have no doubt Mr Doszpot has spoken with them—but other parents might prefer that their child is in an autism intervention unit with an integration day at their local preschool. It may be that this delivers just as good an intervention and occurs closer to the child’s home, allowing less disruption to the whole family. Some parents are passionate about ensuring children are integrated, with support, into a mainstream environment and would not wish for their child to attend a special needs school. I believe further consultation with families of children with autism would be a positive thing.
The policy also assumes a particular service delivery model for the children of the ACT without presenting any evidence that this is the service delivery model that is
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