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The Herald on Sunday features an interview with Nigel Latta by Deborah Coddington, weirdly condensed into this brief about Oppositional Defiance Disorder.
In the full print story, Latta dishes out jumbo servings of his usual faux common-sense parenting advice, lurching into this bizarre statement:
“But I’ve been around the family area more than 20 years, long enough [...]

 Our son Marcus was born after a long and arduous but seemingly straightforward delivery. Birth is traumatic at the best of times, but the following day was pretty traumatic too. Around midnight I received a call from my wife tearfully telling me that Marcus had been having seizures, and had been rushed into the Newborn [...]

 
 The act requiring the new educational standards regime was passed through all its stages in Parliament in 24 hours just before Christmas 2008. It did not go to a select committee where the public, autism advocates, and those with lived experience, could make submissions. This was unfortunate as some of us could have pointed out the negative implications [...]

One Monday in mid-June of 1996 I took the train from Milan to Vicenza and found my way to the street address printed on the call-up card I had received just a few days earlier. A little surprised to discover that it was an ordinary looking residence, not the office or hospital building I expected, [...]

This newsletter from the Ministry of Health outlines what has been happening regarding the NZ ASD Guideline Implementation, which has been mentioned on other occasions on Humans. Sometimes it might seem that there is not much progress on the ground, but there has been a great deal of activity behind the scenes, which will hopefully mean improved supports and services eventually. [...]

  
Danish Thorkil Sonne has built up a successful company, Specialisterne, which employs people with autism in IT and product testing. He is coming to Sydney for the APAC09 conference in August but, unfortunately, contractual obligations prevent him from coming to New Zealand at this time. This article was published in the Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/better-faster-and-no-office-politics-the-company-with-the-autistic-specialists-1693057.html
Better, faster…and no office politics: the company with the [...]

Thursday 2 April was World Autism Day 
President Obama didn’t forget World Autism Awareness Day and his office sent out this message
 Hello,
Kareem Dale, Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy,
advised me to send you the following attachments.
Thank you for all that you do,
Matt Tranchin
The White House
Office of Public Liaison

March 30, 2009

It is with profound commitment [...]

I was angered that a significant change to the Education Act was passed by Parliament through all its stages under urgency before Christmas. It increased fines for parents of students who were not attending school, and it made way for publicly notified standardised testing of primary school students (as in the No Child Left Behind policy of the United States). [...]

Sarah is a New Zealand trained clinician working in Australia. As someone skilled in recognising autism spectrum conditions, she often faces a  dilemma about disclosure of possible AS to her patients. She wrote this for humans. She also has a website www.aspiesontv.blogspot.com
As a clinician working with a range of general patients, but with a research and clinical interest in [...]

Ari Ne’eman, who runs the Autistic Self Advocacy Network in the US, has sent out their recommendations about autism to the Obama Transition Team. President-elect Obama has already promised to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and even had autism-specific policies in his election manifesto. These recommendations have been made at the request of the Transition Team, [...]