"The medicalisation of the normal

range of neurodiversity" is how one of the government's own members of parliament has described the "blow out" in funding "needs" of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. That member is a doctor. 

If her statement is correct in saying that around forty percent of those receiving funding are people who are being labelled as "autistic" then we have a problem. Has the number of children with autism really grown so much? Are we "better at diagnosing it" or are too many children being diagnosed as "autistic"?

My third and final year in teacher training college was where I had my first encounter with the idea of someone being "autistic". I was supposedly studying "special education". Looking back all I was getting was the briefest overview of an incredibly complex area of education. I had already managed to learn far more by working one day of each weekend in a residential nursery school for profoundly deaf children. It was on the same campus as a school for visually impaired children. I had to learn to read Braille "just in case". I was also helping with the Girl Guide company at a school for children with severe physical disabilities. Those experiences and my own personal experience of disability taught me far more than the lectures at college did.  All that aside though "autism" was something I knew almost nothing about. 

One of our lecturers was very keen to explore the area. She was regarded as something of a pioneer in the area. Yes, these children were challenging. Their behaviour patterns were very challenging. They had severe communication impairments. Could they learn? Some of them seemed able to learn but they did learn "differently". Yes, any reasonable person would find them "disabled".

There were very few of these children. There was a unit with just eleven of them. Those of us doing the "special ed" course all spent some time there. I found it very challenging. It was an area I was asked to consider "specialising" in but not one which attracted me to the point of wanting to work there. Other types of communication issues interested me far more. All the same I saw, and still see, these children as having very severe disabilities.

I do not see children who have difficulty in sitting still as "autistic" but it seems this is now regarded as "mild" autism or "being on the spectrum".  "Fidgety" children have always been a challenge but they are undoubtedly more of a challenge in a modern classroom where there is so much more to distract them. Are they disabled though? Are they so disabled they need to be labelled as such and provided with a package by the NDIS?

A good friend has a granddaughter who had multiple medical problems at birth. Some of those problems have been overcome with surgery and medication. There are still some ongoing problems but the child herself is working hard to overcome them and reach the point where she can go to school. She receives no NDIS funding. She is not considered eligible even though she will be home-schooled for the first two years. The reason? Apparently it is because her problems are regarded as "temporary" and "not ongoing".  That her mother cannot go to work right now is not considered an issue but, to me, this is what NDIS funding should be about.

The Senate has just voted against an inquiry into fraud in the NDIS. I am not surprised. They say there is something being done about it. Perhaps there is but I am hearing too many stories about what can only be described as "medicalisation of the normal". They are children, often boys, who are restless and fidgety. They are having difficulty learning in the modern classroom. It simply does not suit them. They are not "engaged". They have been fed so much slick "entertainment" by screen - even the sort supposedly there to educate them - they cannot adjust to what is now required of them. These things do not make them "disabled". It makes the system unfit for their needs. It is the system which needs to change.