Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Hansard source

Just to clarify again, with someone having a functional assessment or prelude to a diagnosis, would there be some determining factor there? Again, take someone who has gone through paediatric psychology—blah, blah, blah—forms of assessments and they are diagnosed with level 3 autism or an intellectual disability et cetera—something that is clearly going to be permanent and lifelong—versus someone who probably would have been given, in the old days, a diagnosis of a global developmental delay and who should be level 1 autism under this new DSM-5 but to whom the paediatrician said: 'You know what? Let me just give you level 2, because otherwise you're not going to get access to the scheme.' However, this functional assessment has shown that their diagnosis is at the much lower end or the diagnosis or the functional capabilities are shown to be different. Would that then be used to determine whether someone goes into the early childhood stream, which would mean that, from my read of it, they would either age out of it or be required to reprove a disability? Is that person with level 3 intellectual disability able to go straight onto the disability stream so as to not have to reprove their diagnosis when they age out of early intervention?