Kiralee and Isolde

‘I'm not asking for anything apart from just kindness and inclusion. Obviously our society has just shut down on disabilities. You’re negated and devalued and denied on a systematic level, because you're not convenient.’

Isolde is the mother of Kiralee who is in her 20s. Kiralee is autistic and has psychosocial disability and associated disorders.

Isolde feels the education and health systems have left Kiralee with ‘no practical support whatsoever for her complex needs’.

‘They're not supportive and if they are, it's only token,’ she told the Royal Commission.

Isolde said ‘support structures were non-existent’ at Kiralee’s primary school.

Isolde paid ‘hundreds of dollars’ to see specialists and went ‘to meeting after meeting’.

‘You jump through all these hoops and none of those actually offer anything. You come away feeling like you're the fault and basically there's no help.’

When Kiralee reached her teens, Isolde moved her away from the ‘faceless city environment’ to a regional area.

‘I visited several disability schools. Tried to maximise her opportunities for a good outcome. I spoke with the education department months before we arrived here. I had no meaningful response from them at all.’

Isolde settled for the local school.

‘But they didn't have a special needs class, which is really what worked best for her.’

Kiralee ended up ‘isolated and abandoned’. Isolde said the principal refused ‘basic interaction or supportive skills’ for her and excluded her from learning and social activities.

‘She was put into classes which weren't relevant, which shut her down. The teachers themselves were probably trying to do their best. Didn't have the right supports.’

When Isolde tried to raise this with the school, ‘they would ambush and stonewall, even lie’.

‘They were just covering, you know, the complete abandonment and undermining of good outcomes for my child and obviously that's systematic within the school system.’

Isolde feels the principal was ‘acting on deliberate political strategies’ to not fund ‘innovative programs for autism that make a difference’.

‘I was just really shocked at the degree of sabotage. If [Kiralee had] gone to a class where she could navigate her social as well as her educational opportunities, she would be in a much better frame of mind than she is now. In the end, she refused to go to school.’

Kiralee left school in year 9. This led to ‘chronic social disconnection’ and an eating disorder. Her mental health issues deteriorated and she started having seizures from malnutrition. Isolde said medical professionals did ‘nothing constructive to assist’.

‘When we go to the hospital, no-one does or says anything. She’s starving herself … All they want to do is give you some pills, which is fine, but it's not going to stop her nutritional deficiency from getting worse and worse.’

Isolde was ‘just horrified at their lack of addressing the critical needs’.

‘It's abuse to not deal constructively with the primary issues. It's like watching her die every day.’

Isolde said Kiralee was recently ‘chucked out of a mental health facility’ where she had just been ‘starting to engage and to respond’.

Isolde wrote to the medical complaints board but found the complaints mechanism was ‘toothless’. There’s no way of holding people ‘legally accountable’.

‘So now I have this child who is in a very depleted situation. For the last eight year she's been in her room hardly engaging … She’s completely dependent on me. The whole thing has been completely annihilating.’