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For those who don’t know me, I’m Matt Frost. I work as Policy and Information Researcher at CCS Disability Action National Office in Wellington. I am also proud to say I am an Aspie!
Last month, I was privileged to be able to attend ceremonies at the United Nations in New York. This is somewhere I […]

The NZ Autism Spectrum Disorder Guideline was launched at Parliament on World Autism Awareness Day, 2 April 2008. It is a world first in that it is a whole of life, whole of spectrum and whole of government approach to autism. It will be a living guideline so can be updated regularly and have gaps […]

The diversity of Autism Spectrum Disorder: Who does it affect?  Tt has no class or race barriers, it’s invisible and among us all. Except I am still often kept hidden. I am intellectually disadvantaged, have learning disorders and yes I am on the autism spectrum, you could say I have an invisible disability.At times in […]

Saving child cancer services at Wellington Hospital has been a major public health issue lately. However, this situation need not have arisen if some forward planning had been done in the 1990s. It takes about 15 years to train a paediatric oncologist and there is a global shortage of these and other skilled health professionals. […]

Autism has featured in the mainstream news lately with a flurry of activity after the NZ Medical Journal of 12 October published an article by a New Zealand doctor working in Australia, proposing that Janet Frame had high-functioning autism (HFA). Rehabilitation physician Sarah Abrahamson of the Queen Elizabeth Centre in Ballarat analysed Janet Frame’s autobiographical […]

Autism support as an election issue? Really? Oddly enough, that appears to be what’s happening in Australia.
 
On the same day that Labor leader Kevin Rudd used his campaign site (yes, there’s no election date, but you can bet there’s a campaign) to announce plans to introduce specialised child care and early intervention services for […]

“The Government’s objective, broadly expressed, is that every person, whatever his level of academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right, as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted and to the fullest extent of his powers. […]

When a news organisation reports on a “new” treatment for autism, you should hear the alarm bells go off in your head — and that’s certainly the case with the Australian Nine Network’s report this week on the work of Matthew Israel, who runs the Judge Rotenberg Centre in Massachusetts.
Israel is a behaviourist who fits […]

Anyone who was at the launch of A Perfect World on Monday night will tell you that “Billy Glish” — David Cohen’s old school friend Bill English — gave a soulful and eloquent speech about the challenges faced by families for whom autism is a daily reality. His observation that the book gave lie to […]