Our Letter Personally Presented to the Prime Minister of Australia Regarding Autism in Australia

This is the letter that was presented to the Prime Minister and Bill Shorten personally at our one on one meeting on 28th July 2009. Other copies were also given to the Prime Minister to give to the relevant Federal Ministers. In addition to the letter, we gave the Prime Minister a copy of the Rainbow Land Play Time newsletter and a copy of the petition lead by Helen Howson to include autism in the National review for disability parking permits. More information on the Disability Parking Permit review soon.

28 July 2009
The Hon Kevin Rudd PM
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Prime Minister,

We sincerely thank you for the opportunity to meet with you to discuss what we are doing to enhance the lives of families living with autism in Australia and globally. We congratulate you on your election promise to provide better autism services and on its implementation, while at the same time putting autism on the political agenda.

In March 2009, I founded with my husband’s full support, an organisation called Autism Global Network. The organisation was established in honour of our three beautiful children, Kristie (10), Jacob (5) and Aaron (5), who were all diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum in July 2007.

While Australia’s official prevalence rate for autism is 1 in 160, which only reflects the rate for children aged between 6 and 12, more alarming figures exist globally. A recent Cambridge University study has found that as many as 1 in 64 children could have autism, due to many children going undiagnosed.

Social inclusion for the whole family is the foundation from which we base our work. As a family, we have personally chosen to embrace autism, to have a positive outlook and to focus on what the children can do, rather than their disability. Based on our own personal experience, we have come to learn that the children can’t achieve their full potential unless the whole family’s needs are supported.

Our Mission Statement for Autism Global Network accurately summarises what we strive to achieve for our families.

"Autism Global Network is an innovative and dynamic organisation that provides knowledge, support, care and understanding to people dealing with autism to enable enhanced opportunities for social inclusion and quality of life. With our drive and passion, we strive to advocate for the human rights of our families and promote community awareness and inclusion at every opportunity."

Our greatest personal achievements have been a direct result from a ‘team effort’ that is driven by us. Our support network comprises of us (parents), siblings, support groups, therapists, educators, and medical professionals. This success is almost impossible to achieve because a large percentage of families are already experiencing social exclusion at the time of diagnosis. In addition, many parents, especially the mothers, are suffering from depression due to the extreme behaviours and lifestyle that comes with raising a child on the autism spectrum.

The most significant difference that our Government’s could be making to parent’s very large stressors is to significantly improve the education system for our children with an autism spectrum disorder. The issues here are endless and of which ultimately leads to the children and their families being excluded from society in almost every way. Many children are being forced to be home schooled because they are not eligible for the special school system, mainstream schools can’t cope with their high level needs and there are simply no places available in the limited number of special units.

For our family, schooling is the most significant stressor and will continue to be for many years to come. The State Governments need to do much more to improve the existing education systems and the lives of families living with autism spectrum disorders. Our children deserve the human right to be given a chance of becoming functioning members of society, where they are employable and therefore pay taxes.

The saddest loss a family living with autism can face, besides the 80-90% divorce rate, is the loss of the family home as a direct result from the extreme medical and therapy bills necessary to give the child any chance of an independent life as an adult.Our deep belief is that it is possible families can be empowered to implement basic, but effective therapy principles into their everyday life at a much lower cost than the current system and therapy methods indicate. If we were to hire a therapist to provide our three children with the recommended 20 hours a week therapy each at an average cost of $50 an hour, our gross annual bill would be $156,000. In addition to this are educational expenses, medical professional consultations, therapy equipment and expensive medications.

Attached to this letter is a summary of the services we currently provide to families living with autism and a business model outlining our future plans. We are passionate about helping to improve the lives of families living with autism at a national and global level. We hope to achieve this in a proactive manner by working closely with the Federal Ministers for Education and Social Inclusion; Health; Families and Community Services; to achieve positive and cost effective outcomes. We invite your Ministers to contact us any time.

We also want to bring to your attention the wonderful support we have been given by Tony Zappia, Member for Makin. Tony is the chief patron of our Rainbow Land Play Time family support group where we currently run a playgroup for the whole family on a Saturday.

Thank you again for the great honour of meeting with you today and we very much look forward to more meetings in the future.

Yours sincerely,


Allison Dix
Autism Global Network

Our Exciting Meeting with the PM, Kevin Rudd & Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities, Bill Shorten

Allison Dix, Kevin Rudd, PM & Shane Dix

Our one on one meeting with the Prime Minister after the Cabinet Meeting/Public Forum was a once in a lifetime experience. We were very lucky to have been chosen for a meeting and were very excited to have the opportunity to represent the autism community.The PM was very warm and made us feel comfortable talking to him about what we want to see happen in the future to improve autism services and to get better outcomes. He was very attentive and had genuine concern for our personal situation having three children on the autism Spectrum. Kristie who has Asperger’s Syndrome is 10 and our twin sons, Jacob and Aaron, who have autism spectrum disorder, just turned 5.What impressed me the most was that every Minister was committed to following up on the issues raised at the Cabinet meeting. The same applied when we met with the PM. He acknowledged the issues we raised about the Helping Children with Autism package, including therapy not being accessible enough to the children and the very long waiting lists. The PM then invited Bill Shorten, the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, to have a separate meeting with us where he recognised that there is a lot more that can be done to help families by providing more services. We were extremely grateful because we were given a lot more time than the allocated 10 minutes and were appreciative of the time taken to listen to our concerns.My personal view is that having autism on the political agenda and The Helping Children with Autism Package was a major win for families like mine at the last election. Through the family business ‘Autism Global Network’, we would love to work with the Government in an advocacy role to get more much needed services for families living with autism.

Bill Shorten brought to our attention that he is working to make early intervention funding more flexible and to add more providers to the list. I was told that FaHCSIA has been pursuing this for a while, especially with regard to getting more providers on the panel.I was also given assurances from Bill Shorten that he will help the Rainbow Land Play Time (Playgroup for families living with autism and development delay) committee explore ways to apply for funding through the proper processes because he recognises that the playgroup model is a good idea but hasn’t received any funding to date because it doesn’t fit existing criteria. Funding for children with autism over the age of seven is a significant issue for a lot of families, but I believe the Government has certainly recognised that it is a problem and that this issue is being looked into.Because of the time constraints, the Helping Children with Autism Package was the only issue we had time to discuss. We hope to discuss the significant issues around education for children with special needs with the Government in the not too distant future.