Eight-year-old Isabelle is gentle, thoughtful and fiercely passionate about the environment – especially ducks. Like many children her age, her room is lovingly filled with soft toys she treasures and carefully looks after. But for Isabelle, who has autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the world can often feel deeply overwhelming and frighteningly unpredictable.
“School was one of the biggest stressors,” recalls Isabelle’s dad, Tom. “She finds noise, social interactions and the unexpected really tricky. She goes to school, but only on a reduced timetable now.”
Before the family connected with the Improving Support for Autism and Intellectual Disability (ISAID) program at The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH), daily life had become increasingly difficult to navigate and at times, unmanageable.
“In Prep she managed okay, but by Grade 1 she was like a different child,” Tom remembered. “She’d come home and explode, take all her clothes off, and couldn’t find the words to describe her day.”
As Isabelle’s distress escalated, she eventually reached breaking point – a moment that left her parents, Tom and Daisy, shattered to see their little girl experiencing such intense and traumatic distress. Overwhelmed and frightened, the family found themselves in the RCH Emergency Department exhausted, scared and unsure what would happen next.
Fortunately, that moment of crisis led them to the compassionate, coordinated care of the RCH’s ISAID team – a leading, innovative program providing intensive, tailored support for children experiencing behavioural crisis and for the families who love and support them.
“That’s when we were introduced to the ISAID team. They spoke to Izzy and helped her come out of her shell a bit. After her crisis, she didn’t want to wear clothes or go outside, but they helped build her back up. They put us in touch with people who specialised in caring for children with autism and ADHD,” explained Tom.
Over the next three months, the ISAID team wrapped around Isabelle and her parents, providing practical, emotional and psychological support. They connected the family with the right specialists who understood both autism and ADHD, helped untangle complex needs, and gave Tom and Daisy a roadmap for what to do next.
For the first time in a long time, the family felt less alone, better understood, and more supported than ever.
Since then, Tom and Daisy have connected with other families facing similar challenges, sharing what they learned through ISAID with parents who now stand where they once stood.
“We’ve met families whose kids are really struggling to get to school and to settle mentally. We tell them there’s a team at the RCH that can help, people they can speak to in a crisis,” Tom shared.
Isabelle and her parents
For Daisy, imagining their journey without the ISAID program is confronting.
“If it wasn’t for ISAID we would have been in an impossible situation. We couldn’t afford the help Izzy needed, and we were waiting for NDIS approval while trying to navigate systems that were costly and inaccessible. ISAID was a lifeline, and without it… we can’t bear to think how dire things would have turned out, not only for Izzy’s mental health but for all our livelihoods,” Daisy shared.
She explained that the ripple effects of a child in crisis are far greater than many realise.
“The impact is huge and not well understood from our experience. We had to drop everything to become crisis carers, and that’s the reality for
so many families like ours. The flow-on effects – financial, housing, job security – are significant and terrifying,” she continued.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Tom, who described the support as nothing short of essential.
“If the ISAID team weren’t there, who else is going to help people through this and give them the knowledge and tools they need to deal with this?”Today, Isabelle is slowly finding her footing again – still passionate about ducks, still tender-hearted, and gaining confidence with the right supports behind her. And for her parents, hope no longer feels out of reach.
“They got us the help we needed and put us on the right track. To have the RCH and the ISAID team to get us through the worst part of it was a gift, truly. I don’t know how we would have got on without them. I don’t know how much worse the damage would have been to all of our mental health – Izzy’s and ours,” said Tom.
The ISAID team