Nem Kearns:

I will be as quick as I can. I wanted to mention that there are wider things we can do. Neuro-affirmative training is not only for the practitioners; it helps autistic young people, or newly-diagnosed autistic people, to learn their own best coping skills.

For example, Senator Black referred to a young man who becomes overwhelmed. I also become overwhelmed. However, I have spoken to autistic people and I have learned much more from the autistic community than I have learned from anybody else. I can now recognise what is happening. I have read research that refers to most of our environments, in particular public environments like schools, hospitals and places like this. Ms O'Donnell-Killen referred to end-of-life care. Autistic people are overrepresented in domestic violence and homelessness shelters.

Many of those support services are sensory hell for many autistic people. It is physically painful and overwhelming. That is not greatly understood. It is called sensory sensitivity, which suggests that these environments irritate us. It does not irritate me; it physically hurts a lot to be forced to be in an environment like a hospital where I am in constant pain due to the sensory environment. If you imagine having an ongoing toothache in an environment with flickering lights, you can imagine how you would lose your ability to deal with other stressors and how your ability to communicate your thoughts, feelings and needs would be greatly impaired and reduced. If we incorporate universal design and make our society more accommodating and inclusive of all needs and neurotypes, it will be of great benefit.

Another thing which feeds into this is the shocking rate of refusal of child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, to accept children and young people who have an autism diagnosis. These services say that they do not do autism. No matter what mental health supports that young person needs, CAMHS will not support them. In my view, that is discrimination on the basis of diagnosis. It not only leaves those young people extremely vulnerable to suicide, which is at epidemic proportions with autistic youth, but also makes it more difficult for them to learn how to cope, regulate, work through crisis and communicate their needs. We are not equipping them for their adult life. We are just hoping that they will survive their youth. We are kicking the problem down the road. We need to stop this idea of siloing off autistic people to separate schools, services and everything else. We need to stop pretending that autism is a problem, to accept that autistic people are part of our communities and our society, and to build our society to include them.