Identifying autism support needs

As a clinician, advocate and Mum of neurodivergent girls, the media focus on ‘mild’ and ‘moderate’ autism and plans to move such individuals off the NDIS scheme has lead to me to think about how we identify support needs. I say this often - to clients, my peers and family/friends - I detest the ‘levels’ of autism (that is 1, 2 or 3) that us diagnosticians need to refer to when making an autism diagnostis. Functioning can fluctuate and environmental demands often affect capacity.

In school, usually it’s ‘behaviour’ - non compliance, disruption, aggression, etc. What happens then to the internalising, masking kids? The ones that everyone misses because they are ‘compliant’ and not causing a fuss but struggling nonetheless. These are the kids who usually end up with ‘School Can’t’ behaviours by mid to late primary - which in many cases no one saw coming. I’ve met many undiagnosed adolescents with such histories and these are the ‘mild’ and ‘moderate’ autistic children that are spoken of.

Internalising behaviours may include anxiety and depression, which can then lead to isolation, disordered eating and sleep and in some cases, sucidal ideation.

Autistic individuals are statistically at higher risk of averse outcomes in all of these areas - lets not make it harder for support to continue and/or encourage ether continued masking to ‘function’. While it’s clear that there are inherent difficulties in the NDIS scheme, there are likely many areas in which funding is being wasted/misused. The concern is that our government is creating a further divide amongst the autistic community when they are disadvantaged enough already.