Autism Act 2009

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I too am very grateful indeed to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for raising this issue; for continuing to put pressure on us to monitor the autism strategy following the 2009 Act; and for deepening our understanding of how autism develops and is regarded within our society. I look forward to hearing details of the 2013 review of the implementation of the Act.

I am grateful for the 2010 statutory guidance to local authorities and health bodies, but I remain alarmed at the slow progress being made on the provision of diagnostic services, especially for adults. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us what guidance there will be for the health and well-being boards and the clinical commissioning groups as the NHS reforms are taken forward.

I look forward too to the self-assessments of local authorities, which are going to be published by the Learning Disabilities Public Health Observatory in July this year. I am aware of the very different levels of progress being made by different local authorities in how they respond to need and in how they use their own finances in this area. I would be very grateful for comment from the Minister on how the self-assessment project is progressing, and on what assurances he can give us as to the future of the learning disability observatory in the light of NHS reforms. It has a crucial role in the monitoring of learning disabilities in general and of autism in particular.

Successive Governments have worked hard to raise our awareness of autism and I pay tribute to both this Government and their predecessors in raising the issues and in getting us to think about just how autism exists in our society. It remains a disability which is not well understood and can be ignored or even despised by many people. I look for encouragement for a wider expression of the reality of autism. The National Autistic Society does an excellent job in alerting us to the needs of people with autism. It remains true that many people have a very limited concept of what autism is about. I, too, was going to ask about the relationship between the Welfare Reform Act and the Autism Act and how they are seen as working together.

That is not least because I am alarmed by the extent to which people with autism are regarded as unwilling to work or as trouble-makers. The National Autistic Society figures suggest that some 15 per cent of adults with autism are in work. Most people with autism are unable to find work. It is crucial that they are not criticised or rejected as a result of that inability to find the work which many of them would very much like to be part of. Physical disability is often respected by the general public. Social disability is much less easy to understand. The work of the National Autistic Society, which helps us to a deeper understanding of the effects of autism, is welcomed by us all. But we now need much better diagnostic opportunities and understanding of causes.

In my ministry, I have had the privilege of a series of contacts with people with autism and their carers. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, said that once you meet one person who has autism and their carers, you find yourself being introduced to a number of people with autism but they can have very different symptoms and ways in which that autism is expressed. That is one of the difficulties of this whole spectrum of issues. I have spent a good deal of time with people with autism—it is by no means unusual for more than one person in a family to have autism—and have watched the careful supervision provided by their carers. Such carers are among the unsung heroes of our society and we need to do all that we can to support and encourage them.

In the context of this debate, I want to pay tribute to the contributions made to society by those who have autism. There are many skills—specifically mathematical skills, for example—which people with autism are able to share with others. Many have an openness and friendliness which means that they give to society more than they receive. But that is dependent on there being carers around them who are able to encourage and help them to express those skills and qualities which are so deep within them.

In our right concern to protect and support them, we need also to be grateful for what they give. I am very grateful for the work of the National Autistic Society and for the 2009 Act, particularly the self-assessments of local authorities and the way in which those self-assessments are dealt with and responded to. I look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate.