Page 3957 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 30 October 2013
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achieved through the early intervention programs provided in Queensland by the AEIOU Foundation. This model of early intervention has shown with proven results what children aged between 2½ and six years of age can achieve.
The service provided by AEIOU in Queensland can, over the life of a child with autism, return in excess of $1 million of benefit back to the community in savings from related expenditure on services such as ongoing educational support, supported accommodation needs and government support payments. This program has the proven ability to improve the lives of these children into the future. Every year children from AEIOU centres transition successfully into mainstream schooling environments, and these numbers are growing.
In stark contrast, the ACT Labor-Greens government here have labelled the AEIOU model as an elitist school that will only be able to be accessed by those in the community who are wealthy enough to afford it and implied that the program would be out of reach for most families. It is shameful that this has been the attitude. Frankly, Madam Speaker, I find this cheap politics.
All MLAs recently received a letter from the chair and founder of the AEIOU Foundation, Dr James Morton. In his letter Dr Morton outlines the facts about the costs of both the initial construction and the cost for Canberra families of providing the ongoing services at the centre. I would like to focus on one particular point made by Dr Morton:
Currently 37 per cent of families attending AEIOU services are on an income less than $40,000 per annum. Comments comparing affordability to private school fees are misleading and damaging to AEIOU and the people who have given their energy and reputations to delivering this service.
To elaborate, a family that earns less than $40,000 can access government funding in the forms of childcare benefit, childcare rebates, carers allowances and funding for helping children with autism. Combining all these funding sources would cover all out-of-pocket expenses. In fact, there would be close to an additional $3,000 in the family budget to access other supports or equipment as they choose.
The funding that is available through the childcare benefit is up to $9,000 per year per family. The childcare rebate provides an additional $7,476. There is also the availability of funding for helping children with autism, a maximum of $12,000 over the upbringing of a child. It is $6,000 maximum a year. Over a two-year program, that goes a substantial way to covering the cost of the fees. If that were combined also with a carer’s allowance, which is in the vicinity of $4½ thousand, those fees are well covered and would still allow the family the flexibility of accessing other services.
To relate it to a bit more of a typical Canberra family—one earning in the vicinity of perhaps $100,000 if both parents were working in the public service—the out-of-pocket expenses would be close to $2½ thousand per year. For the return on the investment, I think that is a very small investment that most families would be willing to make for their children.
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