Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 29 February 2024
93. Deputy Alan Farrell asked the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to provide an update on the autism innovation strategy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8383/24]
Amharc ar fhreagraMy question relates to the autism innovation strategy and the Minister of State's view on the results of the strategy, the implementation of it, and her general view on its capacity to be effective.
The programme for Government contains a commitment to the autism innovation strategy and the development of a national autism strategy. This autism innovation strategy is currently at an advanced stage in response to this commitment. It is my intention that the strategy will be launched in the first half of this year. This is an important priority for me and for the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. I am so ambitious I would like to have it done during autism awareness month. I would like to think we will have it done in early April so parents will be able to see what our ambition is for the rest of our term.
The autism innovation strategy will identify ways to address the bespoke challenges and barriers faced by autistic people and to improve understanding of autism within society and across the public system in a way that complements and enhances wider action on disability. The autism innovation strategy will contain actions that will be undertaken right across Government to better support autistic people and their families over an 18-month period.
Development of the autism innovation strategy is nearing completion and a draft was published on 9 February this year. The draft strategy was prepared based on feedback received as part of an initial public consultation and following discussions with Departments and agencies to agree actions under the strategy.
The draft strategy was published as part of a further public consultation to give the autistic community, their families and supporters another opportunity to have their say. It is actually open at the moment for the second round of public consultation so I appeal to anybody watching and to my colleagues to ensure people feed into that. I am committed to this as part of the development process. Further public consultation on this will be held but will be completed in mid-March so that we have it ready for publication in April.
I genuinely admire the Minister of State's ambition as she has set out. With regard to the public participation, a very good number of autistic individuals who engaged with this. I do not have the numbers in front of me but I think it was approximately 40% from what I read earlier this morning. I am encouraged by that but overall numbers were quite low so the Minister of State's call for participation is absolutely timely. I was taken by a couple of the remarks in the published report mentioned by the Minister of State, which is on her Department's website. It states:
Autistic people should be involved in development, monitoring and review of the autism innovation strategy ... [coupled with] ... the opportunity to move towards a rights-based and person-centred approach which supports the Autistic person's will and preferences, and the right to be their Autistic self.
I was quite taken by that because it is of critical importance. What element of the strategy, once we get to the end of this public consultation process on the implementation side, does the Minister of State believe autistic individuals will have the capacity to engage with?
I was also pleased to appoint an autism innovation strategy oversight and advisory group that has helped to reshape it. That is made primarily of people who are neurodivergent. I facilitate the gathering of the people but the people who are there are neurodivergent and are shaping the strategy. They are the ones who are setting out the various strands within it. I believe in the model of co-design but at this stage the co-design is of the neurodivergent persons as opposed to the officials within our Department. We are stepping back and providing secretarial support to enable it to come to complete fruition and I see the roll-out, follow-up and implementation in exactly the same way, with the oversight group and the advisory group overseeing it.
I just left an all-party autism committee meeting to ask this question and made a bit of an entrance as I did so. The key question I have on this process is twofold. The first part relates to the sharing of information between various Departments and agencies as to the number of autistic people across the State so that we as a House, a Government, as a Legislature can appropriately apply budgets for the provision of those services across all Departments. We really do need to be able to set that out and I hope it will form part of the strategy; and if it does not, that it forms part of the outcome of that strategy.
If it does not, I might ask the Minister of State to comment on the capacity of Government as a whole to provide adequate services on the basis of knowing the numbers because data is just so important. Her colleague in the Department of Health talks about nothing without data and this is probably one of those occasions where that might be helpful in this Department.
Absolutely. The first part of the autism innovation strategy was to bring a whole-of-government approach to ensure that we created awareness in all Departments. Some of the time we would say that there was a lot of low-hanging fruit in a lot of the Departments but while working on some of that low-hanging fruit, we gather the data at the same time. It feeds into the national disability strategy as well so it is not in a silo. There is a whole mainstreaming-first approach but also feeding in and gathering the data so we can enable Departments to have ring-fenced budgets to ensure full and equal inclusion and participation of the neurodivergent community as well as the disability community among all the Departments.
