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National Health and Mental Health Roadmap

Home Our Advocacy National Health and Mental Health Roadmap

25 February 2025

The Australian Government  Department for Health and Aged Care, released the National Roadmap to Improve the Health and Mental Health of Autistic People 2025-2035 on 25 February 2025.

The Roadmap aims to address the breadth of issues faced by Autistic people in the Australian healthcare system. It outlines the path to improve the physical and mental health of Australia’s growing Autistic population.

Roadmap documents:

The Roadmap forms the fourth pillar of Australia’s National Autism Strategy 2025–2031 (the Strategy). The NAS sets out the broader vision for a safe and inclusive society for all Autistic people.

The Roadmap aims to:

  • Improve support for Autistic people, their families and carers, in health and mental health services
  • Improve the quality, safety and availability of Autism Affirming health and mental health care across the lifespan of Autistic people
  • Build better connections between health, mental health, and other service sectors, including the NDIS
  • Improve autism education and training for health and disability professionals
  • Strengthen research and data on health and mental health of Autistic people and their families and carers.

For more details please visit the Department’s website here.

The Autism Health Roadmap was written in close consultation with Autistic people, the autism community, academic experts, and health and mental health professionals. This included a national co-design process and public consultation. Autism CRC lead the co-design work.

The Australian Autism Alliance welcomes the release and is proud to have been an integral part of its existence being the early advocates who started the work with the department as referenced on their website, and then was a member of the Autism Health Roadmap Working Group.

From small beginnings and a significant amount of unpaid effort we now have a 10-year National Roadmap (2025 to 2035) to Improve the Health and Mental Health of Autistic People. The journey started with a small group, Autism Aspergers Advocacy Australia (A4), Amaze and the Australian Autism Alliance holding regular meetings with the Department of Health.

We wrote a comprehensive paper regarding why there was a  need for a National Health and Mental Health Roadmap for Autism.

The Australian Autism Alliance then convinced the ALP government to provide a pre-election commitment to this National Health and Mental Health Roadmap for Autism and allocate an initial $300,000 to kick off its development.

With the Department of Health, A4 (Bob Buckley, Monique Blakemore, Amaze (Nicole Antonopoulos) and the Australian Autism Alliance (Jenny Karavolos) developed the original elements of the Roadmap, which the Australian Autism Alliance members contributed to.