Science China. Life sciences
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The evolution of a local fragmented model of services for children with autism in Hong Kong emerged gradually over the past three decades with lack of government funding or support. This had been due to increasing number of children with autism being detected and referred for earlier assessment. With increasing pressure from parents due to long waiting time for assessment and training services and the increasing polarization by mass media there had been a gradual increasing public awareness over the past five years. ⋯ The research output and organization of forums for public education and awareness are reviewed. The latter part of the paper reports the summary of clinical profile of autism cases (N=1441) assessed from 1985 to 2010 June under the University of Hong Kong. As the waiting time for initial developmental assessment for any children in Hong Kong is 12-24 months, we also report our preliminary experience with a newly launched triaging service provision for children suspected to be ASD since 2009, including multi-disciplinary assessment and parallel interim training in our university affiliated child assessment centre in Hong (N=89).