Adults with autism are set to get the same access to jobs, education and good health care as everybody else following a pledge from government today in its first autism strategy for England.
Care services minister Phil Hope says the strategy is not about creating a raft of new services, but about reorganising those that exist to help people with autism better. "The success of the strategy will depend upon those existing services changing to recognise and respond to the needs of people with autism," he says.
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Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University, warmly welcomes the document. "Encouragingly, it pinpoints achievable solutions that could radically improve the lives of people with autism," he says. "This is an important new development, following on the heels of the historic new Autism Act." But he suggests that additional finance might be required. "The hope is that the autism strategy will lead to the identification of desperately needed funding to meet the cost of these essential provisions," he says.
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The Autism Act 2009 was passed in response to increasing evidence that people with autism suffer social and economic exclusion. Only 15% of adults have jobs, they have poorer health than the rest of the population, and 49% of adults live with and are dependent on their parents. The launch of the strategy is a requirement of the act.
See the official release from the Department of Health.
See a brief video of Phil Hope:
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