‘Action Plan for Promoting Care for Children with Autism (2024-2028)’

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This national policy notification (‘Action Plan’), dated July 21, 2024, was issued under the official seals of seven key organisations – the China Disabled Persons' Federation (CDPF), the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the National Health Commission, the National Medical Insurance Administration, the Communist Youth League, and the All-China Women's Federation.

The overall aim of the Action Plan is to significantly strengthen support and care services for children with Autism and their families, through a coordinated and integrated effort and alignment across China provinces, regions and cities and similarly across various institutions and organisations.

The policy statement points to an increased focus of various regions and departments to strengthen Autism assessment and diagnosis, and to improve rehabilitation and education standards for children with Autism. However, it acknowledges that service provision for children with Autism still faces many outstanding difficulties and problems and goes on to outline the unified action required across the nation.

The policy’s guiding principles include adhering to the ‘people-centered development philosophy’ reflected in the 15th Five-Year Plan with a specific emphasis on improving the ‘entire life cycle’ of care and service for Autistic people and fundamental protection and safeguarding of Autistic children.

Most notably amongst the guiding principles is a commitment to strengthen overall planning and coordination, linkages and resource integration with an emphasis on addressing shortcomings and deficiencies and to promote the improvement of care service standards for Autistic children.

It includes a goal of national improvement within five years in the mechanisms for care services and systems for children with Autism along with increased service capacity and safeguard conditions for the entire developmental process of children with Autism.

In line with the general approach to accountabilities for implementation, the Action Plan emphasises the requirement for cities, provinces and regions to take the lead on the development of infrastructure to better support Autistic children and their families including:

• the development of a rehabilitation service network;

• addressing professional practitioner talent shortages through targeted training and career promotion;

• development of quality standards for rehabilitation institutions including more robust registration and supervision;

• allocation of special education schools for children with Autism including the encouragement of larger cities and provincial capitals to build special education schools for children with Autism and the development of educational infrastructure, including in higher education to support these schools;

• bolstering basic insurance and welfare funding mechanisms for families with Autistic children; and

• and the development of ‘family-centred’ early intervention services

The Action Plan also focuses on ‘capacity building’, calling for a unified and coordinated implementation effort across the entire apparatus of national policy execution including education, civil affairs, health and medical insurance departments and relevant NGOs.