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The following article was written by Reesh Lyon, a journalism student at Wellington’s Whitireia Polytechnic, about Alan George a member of his quiz team. It is reproduced here with the permission of Alan, Reesh and the journalism course. The full article is at http://www.newswire.co.nz/2009/03/invisible-disability/

Mar 30th, 2009 | By Reesh Lyon | Category: Featured Article, Front Page [...]

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 [...]

Hi everyone,
 Hope this blog finds everyone in ‘cyber space’ well.
I was very interested in the Prime Minister’s ’summit on employment’ last Friday. Those who know me won’t be very surprised by that (but they might be surprised to read that I didn’t watch the closing comments live- I was exploring another passion of mine- cricket- [...]

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). [...]

Here is the latest official news on the Austism Spectrum Disorder Guideline from the Ministry of Health. Some of the formatting and visual information has been lost in translation but you can see the original pdf at  New Zealand Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Guideline Updates
http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/pagesmh/8594/$File/asd-newsletter-dec08.pdf
Two new tenders have also just been released as part of the implementation process. [...]

[This is an abridged version of a paper I gave as part of a symposium on the NZ ASD Guideline at the Australasian ASSID conference in Melbourne on 26 November 2008. I would be interested in any feedback.] 
Introduction
The New Zealand Autism Spectrum Disorder Guideline is a whole of spectrum, whole of life, whole of government approach [...]

The Herald on Sunday has a story about the death of Finn Higgins, noting that “an independent review of his situation shows that the mental health crisis team failed Higgins at every turn.”
Che Tibby is justifiably angry in response, and there are some useful comments under his blog post, including one from Finn’s mother, Diane [...]

People may be wondering what has been happening with the implementation of the NZ ASD Guideline since a consortium led by the New Zealand Guidelines Group working in partnership with the Ministries of Health and Education began working on it earlier this year. An Implementation Advisory Group (IAG) was set up, has now met three times, and has started prioritising the [...]

DISABILITY BILL PASSED
The first week of September was a busy week for Disability Issues. Tuesday night 2 September saw a significant step towards an inclusive New Zealand, with the passing of the Disability Bill that clears the way for New Zealand’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This work has been led by Minister for Disability Issues [...]

When we were young my sisters and I spent many happy hours playing with a Hornby clockwork trainset which my father had collected in the 1920s. It had a gauge of about two inches, three shiny locomotives, and enough tracks and rolling stock to populate three bedrooms and a hallway. So I wasn’t surprised when my [...]