Childcare plan for the autistic by Patricia Karvelas, 15nov05
A NATIONAL chain of childcare centres for the autistic could be integrated into ABC Learning Centres under a proposal to help parents cope with the disorder.If the plan is endorsed, parents paying up to $60,000 a year to get in-home care for their autistic children will be able to pay the kinds of childcare fees other parents pay. James Morton, who founded the AEIOU Centre, the only full-time childcare program for young children with autism, has developed the plan and won support from the publicly listed ABC to roll it out nationally. Autistic children suffer from a range of learning difficulties including poor concentration and communication skills. The numbers of sufferers has been rising in recent years, placing additional strain on limited facilities. At the moment, Dr Morton runs a centre in Brisbane with annual fees of $14,000. Dr Morton said ABC chief executive Eddy Groves had offered to share free of charge the listed company's premises with the AEIOU. He said under the proposal, AEIOU would run the program, pay specialist childcare workers with skills in autism and collect fees from parents on a not-for-profit basis. ABC would pay for the premises and overheads. "Parents would pay a childcare fee and the federal Government would supply the extra funding so that their fees were kept low,"Dr Morton said. "ABC would provide the space and the overheads for free." ABC Learning Centres chief executive officer for education Le Neve Groves said the benefits of providing early intervention programs for autistic children were immense and said ABC was proud to be able to provide facilities to assist. "Autism Spectrum Disorder is diagnosed in at least one in every 300 children aged between two and five years of age and represents more than 50 per cent of children with learning difficulties," Dr Groves said. A spokesman for Family and Community Services Minister Kay Patterson said the Government was considering the issue. "A proposal has recently been put to the Government. It is quite a complex matter and the minister is waiting for advice from her department," he said. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,17248837,00.html