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Autism Bill

Yes, and the Martin Knapp report that was published a little while ago considered the economics and the cost of this situation. I hope that the NAO report will address it as well, and that we will be better informed by that report. The interesting thing about the amount of money that is spent by social services is that when they provide nothing, or something that is inappropriate, at a lower level, they end up dealing with people in crisis later on, which costs them huge amounts of money. I worry about the associations local authorities make with autism—some of them, not all, as some of them are very good. Because they only ever hear about the crisis of autism, which means big bucks, they are terrified of the subject. As for low-levels of input, I mentioned something like a befriending service. Such a service would come low in the list of priorities in the assessments of most social services, but it could be a lifesaver for someone with Asperger's syndrome.