<p>Children with Autism</p>

Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 1:36 pm on 8 February 2017.

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Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative 1:36, 8 February 2017

I’ve just hotfooted it over with some of your colleagues from the cross-party autism group meeting in the Pierhead. At our previous meeting, we took a presentation from the Autistic Women’s Empowerment Project, discussing the different presentations of autism in women and girls and suggesting that the ratio—the accepted ratio of five boys to one girl—should actually be a lot closer. We were told that many females are left undiagnosed, misdiagnosed or without support, and while autistic girls face many of the same challenges as autistic boys, boys explode and girls implode. How, therefore, will you and your colleagues address the very real problem, evidenced by a large body of casework that I have, of girls being denied diagnosis because of schools reporting that they cope so well in school, despite the fact that they’re then going home, melting down and, in many cases, self-harming and, in one of my own cases, even attempting suicide?