'My 9-year-old autistic daughter needed help, but she was handcuffed to a stretcher instead.'

"If I step foot in that ambulance, I'm going to end up in a mental ward," Amy remembers telling her friend and advocate Kristie, who was watching helplessly as her nine-year-old daughter Isla was handcuffed to a stretcher.

The young girl, sedated and restrained, was being loaded into an ambulance — not because of a medical emergency, but because a desperate plea for help had spiralled into chaos.

This confronting scene at the National Disability Insurance Scheme office was the culmination of what Amy describes as a system that has "failed at every crack" — leaving both mother and daughter traumatised, isolated, and fighting for basic support.

Watch: Waleed Aly discusses autism on 'The Project'. Post continues after video.

Amy is a single mother of two daughters — Isla, nine, and Kailani, six. Both girls have autism; the eldest is non-verbal.

She describes a life most would struggle to comprehend, in which simple tasks like grocery shopping have been impossible for years.

"Three or four weeks ago, I went to the shops with her for the first time in three years," Amy explained. "I thought, 'I'll go in, I'll get bread, I'll get Isla a box of chocolates'. She loves her boxes of chocolates. Never eats them, just sits there and plays with them."

That rare trip ended with what Amy called "dead weight" — Isla dropping to the ground, refusing to move. "I had never prayed so hard in my life. I was like, 'Oh my god, please get up, please get up.' I was in my head like, 'I don't know how I'm going to get her from the floor to the car."

Kailani, meanwhile, struggled to understand the scene.

"She's getting upset because Isla wants to leave, or she's running in the opposite direction, and I then have to make a choice to either stay with the younger child or run after the eldest child."

The incident occurred just a month after Isla had been expelled from her specialist school. The nine-year-old had been experiencing a number of behavioural challenges, which included times that Isla had "lashed out at the teachers".

For months prior, Amy had been desperately reaching out to politicians, schools, and disability services, trying to find a solution.

"I've been crying out for help. I've been going to the school since August, going 'Tell me what to do. Where do I go? I'm failing. My mental health is failing,'" Amy told Mamamia.

The single mother had tried to explain to the school's staff that Isla's behaviour was often linked to her inability to hear them properly — something finally confirmed by doctors in January 2025 when they discovered fluid in her ears.

"I said, 'Look, you've just got to speak up,'" Amy explained. "Because at home, in the last eight months, I found that if I go 'Isla, no!' and raise that tone in your pitch, and you keep the words clear and concise, you may have a little bit of backlash, but she's nine, so she's going to throw a tantrum. But it's not an aggressive fight."

When she presented this solution to the principal in August, his response left her frustrated: "He looks at me, and he said, 'We cannot raise our voice[s]. That goes against our moral and ethical code.'"

The irony wasn't lost on Amy.

"In my head, I thought, 'Yeah, but it's all right for her to come home with nine bite marks on her. That's not against the code?'"

The timing of the expulsion couldn't have been worse for Amy. It was just three weeks before Christmas, right when support services were shutting down for the holiday period.

"You did this three weeks before Christmas, before the entire country shuts down," Amy told school administrators. "Nobody can help us now, and now I've got another six weeks on top of it, the hardest section of the year with both my girls."

Her attempts to find alternative schools were quickly thwarted by bureaucratic requirements — Isla was rejected from two institutions because she couldn't complete a cognitive assessment, even though documentation proved that it was an impossible task for the young girl.

As a last resort, Amy brought Isla into an NDIS office on February 10, 2025, Amy's friend Kristie with them for moral support. A staff member asked Amy what brought them in.

"Look, I'm getting to the point that I'm ready to relinquish care of my eldest child," she said, her voice breaking. "I do not want to do that. Please don't make me do that. Please help us."

Isla, overwhelmed and unable to communicate verbally, began acting out. An NDIS worker jumped in and insisted the nine-year-old must have a physical issue.

"She's going, 'It must be a UTI. It must be a UTI'," Amy recalled. "And I just thought, 'What's the obsession with a UTI?' She just kept reiterating that we need a full medical review before we can escalate the child's case."

While Amy was trying to calm Isla, the staff member took matters into her own hands — without Amy's consent.

"I've turned around, and she's on the phone to an ambulance. And I thought, 'What the hell?' I'm looking at Kristie, going, 'What's going on?'"

Amy doesn't recall how much time passed before a paramedic entered the building.

"Do you want to sedate her and send her to hospital to get the full medical review?" they asked.

Overwhelmed and confused, Amy looked to her friend for guidance. Seeing as though the ambulance was already there, Kristie suggested they go through with it.

Nothing could have prepared Amy for what happened next.

"They handcuffed her to the bed, and I just started losing it… I was so angry, so confused and so heartbroken," she said. "I looked at Kristie, and she said, 'Do you want to go with her?' I said 'If I step foot in that ambulance, I'm going to end up in a mental ward.'"

Kristie volunteered to accompany Isla in the ambulance, and Amy followed them there.

"I don't understand why you're here," the emergency doctor said upon their arrival. "Did she have a car accident? Did she fall out of a tree?"

The discharge papers would later read: "No medical intervention required. Unsure why NDIS referred?"

For Amy, this incident exemplified everything wrong with how the system handles complex disability cases.

"This system is so broken and parents do not know how to navigate it," she told NDIS officials in a follow-up call. "You will have more children at your doorstep, and you cannot sedate every single one of them."

Amy, who previously worked as a mechanical engineer, has followed disability legislation for years, but she cannot keep up.

"The laws are changing so much. One week you're allowed this, next week you put this in and it's rejected, but it was approved for another family. Where's the consistency?"

Now, a GoFundMe page started by her friend Hayley aims to raise money for legal support, though Amy is hesitant about accepting financial help.

"The only thing I want from this story is for a change," she told Mamamia. "Any money that comes through... I want to change the laws."

And as more families reach out to share similar experiences, Amy is more determined than ever.

"These families are drowning," she said. "And I know this because I'm drowning too."

At the end of the day, her greatest fear isn't about the daily struggles or the battles with bureaucracy — it's about Isla's future.

"As much as I want this negativity out there to make a change, I also want people to know she's a kindhearted kid that also loves life too, as hard as it is for her," said the proud mum, gushing about the nine-year-old's love for Taylor Swift, dancing, and the sound of her own echo.

"I look at her, and I think, 'The world's just gonna eat you up, kid'. And then I think to myself, 'You can't die, Amy, you have to outlive your kids.'"

You can help families like Amy's by supporting the fundraiser here.

Feature Image: Supplied.