But she was so dissatisfied by the process she cut her son’s assessment short.
“It’s just sort of, sit down, the laptop comes out, out comes a manual of questions, and the testing begins,” she said.
“Some of the questions were about his capability in certain areas. And he’d be sitting there saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I can do a lot.’ It was, ‘Do you do all your own cooking?’ and he’d be like, ‘Oh, yeah, I can cook.’ There’s a big difference between whether you can cook something and, ‘Can you live independently?’
“He was answering incorrectly, not meaning to. And she’s noting all this down. My concern was, how good are these assessors? Do they know about autism, and/or intellectual disability? Are these answers going to be considered ‘the answers’?”
Chloe Hayden, 23, is a YouTuber and motivational speaker from Geelong, Victoria.
She is one of an estimated 353,880 Australians who live with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a range of developmental disabilities including autism and Asperger syndrome that cause significant social, communication and behavioural challenges.
Men and women with ASD communicate, interact and learn differently to typically developing adults, with cognitive abilities ranging from gifted to severely impaired.
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Chloe Hayden (pictured) is a YouTuber and motivational speaker from Geelong, VIC. She is one of an estimated 353,880 Australians who live with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
One in 70 Australians were diagnosed with the disorder in 2019.