Nem Kearns:

I thank Senator Black for the question. It will need a multipronged approach. Part of it is about addressing the lack of public services. Ethnic minorities and migrant communities are statistically more likely to live in financial precarity or poverty, as are women. This is one piece of the puzzle. There are fantastic resources being developed by Thriving Autistic and the Adult Autism Practice in particular. A handbook was recently published. Part of what it addresses is robust neuroaffirmative assessment of women and other marginalised people.

A key part of this across the board is centring autistic people ourselves and centring the voices and experience of autistic people, particularly prioritising the input of disabled persons organisations. It is something we always speak about but we are always speaking about it for reason. It is given priority in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for a reason. It really is fundamental and foundational. By doing so it brings together the expertise needed. There are amazing autistic professionals who work in diagnostic services and support services. We are not just, for want of a better word, patients. We are the experts by experience and in every other way. We are a wide and varied community. Together we can identify those parts of the puzzle that must come together.

Certainly another large part must be appropriate and correct up-to-date neuroaffirmative training for professionals. GPs may not have been given proper training on this or they have not been given the opportunity to learn about the progress since they left their studies.

There was a view that only boys were autistic. Many people learned that in college. If they have not been given the opportunity to access better and more up-to-date training, they will be left with that impression and bias. It is not their fault, so to speak. In addition, a special education teacher does not technically need to have any expertise whatsoever, specifically around autism or any other disability. Many teachers are going above and beyond and paying out of their own pocket for the training they need. Our teachers are being asked to do more and more with less and less. The State needs to step up and co-develop or identify the existing autistic-led professional training - Autism Cork, for example, provides accredited training – and then fund, provide and roll-out that training to front-line people. If the people who are able to refer people on to the diagnosticians do not know what to look for and who to refer, just focusing on the diagnostic process itself will not solve the issue, if that makes sense. It needs to be a whole-society approach.