Dear members
As the mother of a child with autism in Western Australia, my submission to the enquiry relates to evidence-based practices in schools and strategies that currently don’t work and are potentially harmful to autistic young people.
My daughter’s experience with the school system can be separated into two distinct sections: primary school, where her autism was undiagnosed and unrecognised, and high school, where her autism became more obvious and she has struggled to regularly attend school.
Autism in girls is still underdiagnosed1 and particularly in primary school they tend to mask quite successfully. This was the case for my daughter. As she has high intelligence, her average grades meant she did not appear at educational risk and socially she was able to mimic her peers until at least around age 9 or 10. Signs of autism were dismissed largely as parental fault or immaturity by teachers. I did obtain a diagnosis of inattentive ADHD for her in Year 3 despite a lack of support offered by the school.
Financial ability to pay for a diagnosis is another factor in underdiagnosis – the diagnostic process even for ADHD, let alone the subsequent journey for autism, cost me a lot of money. I would love to see more resourcing for qualified school-based psychologists who could observe children in the classroom and one-on-one, and compile reports to be used to form the basis of an autism diagnosis or at least a presumed or likely one.
The school system could incorporate practices that worked off a presumed or likely diagnosis as there are many accommodations that do not actually require funding – such as alternative uniform arrangements, allowing children to arrive late, take sensory breaks, wobble on stools, wear headphones at assembly and so on. Positive Behaviour Support is all the rage in our primary schools, yet like ABA-type therapy this can be damaging for autistic children. Amongst a group of my peers whose children are persistently unable to attend school – in many cases due to neurodivergence including autism – the recommended trauma-informed practice looks more like Dr Ross Greene’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS)2 and it would be my wish for more schools to use this body of work. This is a group called School Can’t Australia, which is in the process of becoming a registered not-for-profit organisation.
In high school, my daughter became increasingly dysregulated and unable to continue masking with the increased social, emotional and academic demands of high school (noting that she is very intelligent, but struggles with written expression and with auditory processing of complex instructions). This led to very low school attendance and eventually a move from a large public high school to a much smaller non-government non-religious independent school, which has more of a focus on project-based learning.
Eventually at the end of Year 8 her autism diagnosis was confirmed.
Many parents of neurodivergent children are also neurodivergent ourselves. As a full-time working mother of four, at least two of whom are neurodivergent, the likelihood is that I am also autistic
1 Dr Michelle Garnett and Professor Tony Attwood, ‘How to Recognise Autism in Girls’ https://attwoodandgarnettevents.com/how-to-recognise-autism-in-girls/
myself. The executive functioning required to manage services and appointments for our children is therefore a huge challenge in our day-to-day lives.
The recommendations I would like the committee to consider are:
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Accommodations made in schools based on a likely or presumed diagnosis, where these accommodations do not require funding.
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Wrap around services provided in schools including psychological observation and assessment, occupational therapy and speech therapy to reduce the burden on parents.
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A review of PBS practices with a view to considering the trauma experienced by many autistic children in schools and employing trauma-informed practices such as Dr Ross Greene’s CPS.
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A move away from the ‘bigger is better’ philosophy when it comes to public schooling. Autistic children, and children with other conditions such as ADHD, anxiety and PTSD, tend to do better in smaller schools. As parents we should not always have to resort to the private school system to find such schools.
Yours sincerely