Every year, when the time for the Budget is near, the public conversation about children with disabilities surfaces.
There is usually a request for more services and resources, especially for children with autism.
But we fail to ask some key questions. We fail to move the conversation beyond “We need more autism centres, therapy, and therapeutic hours” toward the much bigger question of “What kind of early childhood system in Malaysia should we be building”, since the existing system is so fragmented.
Consider the journey most families experience. The parents, at times the nursery teacher, or the nurse at a Klinik Kesihatan, notices some developmental delay in a child.
