Amaze
Ground Floor, 678 Victoria Street, Richmond VIC 3121
PO Box 374, Carlton South VIC 3053
W amaze.org.au
Senate Select Committee on Autism Department of the Senate PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600
15 September 2020
Dear Senators,
Re: Submission to the Senate Select Committee on Autism
Amaze is a member of the Australian Autism Alliance (the Alliance) and has led the consultation on and development of the submission made by the Alliance to this Inquiry. The Alliance’s submission canvasses broad policy reform recommendations and offers the Senate Select Committee on Autism (the Committee) a detailed perspective on how the services and supports for autistic people can be improved. Amaze strongly supports the positions and recommendations raised by the Alliance in its submission to the Committee.
Having provided a detailed submission through the Alliance, we now wish to offer some additional insights relating to the Alliance’s recommendations to:
- Fund a public education campaign to improve understanding of autism and how to support autistic people; and,
- Expand investment in pre-planning support and peer networks, drawing on the successful NDIA Disability Support Organisations program.
While based on the earlier work undertaken by the Alliance, this submission represents Amaze’s views, as they relate to these recommendations.
Public education mass media campaigns can successfully change how autism is viewed
In February 2020, Amaze launched the Change Your Reactions public education campaign. The campaign encouraged Victorians to recognise the challenges faced by autistic people in everyday situations, and to understand the impact of their actions and reactions. The decision to develop the campaign was driven by research that showed that while awareness of autism in the general public was evident, people did not understand or know how to support autistic people in their daily lives.1
The first burst of the campaign (February 2020) was a resounding success. It reached 59% of the metropolitan and 63% of regional TV markets, 1.2 million listeners via metropolitan radio, and importantly, reached 6.3 million people via digital media.
1 Jones S et al., 2017. Experiences of Autistic People and their Families, Centre for Health and Social Research, Australian Catholic University.
Viewers felt the ads were believable. For neurotypical viewers, 90% felt concerned about how autistic people were treated; 85% intended to refrain from being judgmental; and 81% were made to stop and think. Importantly, of those who saw the campaign, 68% reported having a better understanding of autism.
We are excited about these results and believe they show that public information campaigns can have a positive impact on the broader community’s understanding of and response to autism, and importantly, that a campaign can be led by the autism community.
A second campaign burst was planned for July 2020. However lockdowns and restrictions in public places in response to the current COVID-19 pandemic has put any further campaign activity on hold.
While the campaign’s reach through traditional media was limited to within Victoria, we note with interest the broad distribution using social and digital media, and the scope that this potentially offers for a national campaign.
Autistic people have told us that their experience of social isolation is in a large part driven by an expectation that people will react negatively towards them because of their autism, with similar experiences being reported by the parents of autistic children. While disheartened to hear about these experiences, we are buoyed by the impact of and response to the campaign, and believe that positioning it for a national focus would be a highly effective way to increase understanding of autism in the broader community and help to address some of the persistent challenges experienced by autistic people.
When considering the Alliance’s recommendation to develop a National Autism Strategy, Amaze submits that a sustained, national mass traditional and digital media public education campaign should be a fundamental pillar of efforts to improve the inclusion and social participation of autistic people.
Peer support is a means of empowering individuals and groups
As outlined in the Alliance’s submission to the Committee, autistic people experience high barriers to accessing mainstream disability, health, social and mental health services. While there are significant reforms required to ensure the system architecture governing key service delivery programs (for example, the NDIS) are responsive to autistic people, we believe there is an essential role for peer-led capacity building and support activities that engage and empower autistic people in advocating for their own needs, and supporting their peers to do the same.
Underlining our commitment to peer support, Amaze facilitates a state-wide network of peer-led support groups that engage and empower autistic people and parents of autistic children. Built on foundations of self-reliance and self-advocacy, this network provides autistic people with information, empowerment, and control over how they engage with the autism community and essential service providers, such as the NDIS. Importantly, these groups help their members to self-manage a range of decisions, challenges and opportunities in their engagement with mainstream services and in their daily lives.
Our model of peer support is not just valuable to autistic people; formal evaluations (unpublished) of our work have highlighted the broader benefits to the NDIA and the participant planning
process. Evaluations found that the efficiency of participant planning processes were improved due to individuals having a deeper understanding of how to prepare for their meetings. Further, peer support was found to play a critical role in strengthening participants’ capabilities to exercise choice and control over their packages.
Amaze’s peer support program is currently provided to our community free-of-charge, and resourced entirely through fundraising and philanthropic means. Across the nation there are other disparate and small scale peer-support models, including some funded by ILC grants.
A coherent and evidence-informed model of peer-support for autistic people and their families across the nation would deliver significant value. We encourage the Committee to recommend roll out a national program of peer support for autistic people and their families.
Amaze would welcome the opportunity to appear before the Committee
We are excited to share our vision for how our successful Victorian projects and initiatives could inspire Australia-wide approaches.
We would be grateful for the opportunity to appear before the Inquiry to discuss the learnings from the Change Your Reaction Campaign and our Peer Support initiatives in detail.
The Committee’s Secretariat is most welcome to contact Nicole Rees, Amaze Deputy CEO and Head of Policy, on redacted: s47F - personal privacy or at redacted: s47F - personal privacy to progress opportunities for collaboration and to discuss Amaze’s work in depth.
Yours sincerely,
Fiona Sharkie Chief Executive Officer Amaze