ADHDifference

S2E17: ADHD Inquiry New Zealand + guest Sian Flynn-Coleman

• Julie Legg • Season 2 • Episode 17

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Julie Legg speaks with Sian Flynn-Coleman, an ADHD life coach, mother, and passionate advocate of the ADHD Inquiry New Zealand. Together, they unpack the ADHD Inquiry petition calling for a public investigation into the systemic gaps that impact ADHDers across health, education, justice, and employment sectors in Aotearoa. 

It’s calling for a national cross-sector ADHD strategy and an annual funding plan — not to start from scratch, but to build on the progress already made and ensure lasting reform. With lived experience and clarity, Sian highlights why coordinated national support is critical and how collective voices can lead to lasting change.

Whether you’re based in New Zealand or beyond, this conversation offers hope, solidarity, and practical insight into what advocacy can look like from the ground up.

Key Points from this Episode:

  • Sian’s personal ADHD diagnosis and the turning point that led to advocacy
  • Why the ADHD Inquiry NZ matters now—and what it’s really calling for
  • The concept of “systemic harm” and what a public inquiry could achieve
  • The hidden cost of inaction: financial, societal, and personal
  • How a petition becomes part of the national record and leads to change
  • What sustainable, government-backed funding could unlock for ADHD support
  • Disproportionate impact on the justice system
  • The power of grassroots movements and collective visibility
  • What Sian would say to policymakers, and the hope she holds for the future

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JULIE: Welcome to Season 2 of ADHDifference. I'm your host, Julie Legg, ADHD advocate, author of The Missing Piece: A Woman's guide to Understanding, Diagnosing, and Living with ADHD, and an unapologetic doer of many things. This season, we're turning up the volume with a global lineup of brilliant guests bringing their lived experiences, insights, research, strategies, and resources. And of course, along with a healthy dose of humour and humility, whether you're neurodivergent yourself or just curious, there's something here for every curious brain. Let's dive in. Today I'm joined by Sian Flynn-Coleman, an ADHD life coach and a passionate advocate for the ADHD Inquiry New Zealand, a grassroots community-led petition calling on Parliament to investigate systemic harm and push for real change. The inquiry seeks to address everything from misdiagnosis and stigma to lack of support across health, education, justice, and employment systems. It's calling for a national cross sector ADHD strategy and an annual funding plan, not to start from scratch, but to build on the progress already made and ensure lasting reform. unfunded, collective, and powered by lived experience, the ADHD inquiry reminds us that real change begins with real stories and with people who refuse to give up on being heard. Welcome to the show. [Thank you so much, Julie. It's wonderful to be here.] Before we dive into the ADHD Inquiry itself, I'd love to start with your personal connection to ADHD. So, what has your own journey looked like? 

SIAN: Yes, it's been an interesting one. I didn't know I had ADHD as a young person and but I always felt different. I felt somehow othered at school in a way. And there were many reasons perhaps why. You know, I was a farm girl. I went to boarding school. I lived with my grandparents, not my mum. My dad was out of the picture. And you know there were I suppose lots of reasons interplaying into why I felt quite different to other people. But I suppose you know looking back at my childhood and things and also adolescence and teenage years and then into university, I can just see how ADHD really manifested itself in in me and my behaviour. You know, struggling with procrastination and always pushing out deadlines to the very last minute. And I, it's like I always needed and I was very well aware of it, especially in uni, that I needed that urgency and drive and adrenaline rush as the deadline loomed, you know, for assignments and whatnot. And I'd love like going to the library and doing all the research and doing all the planning for the things, but when it came to like sitting down and actually writing and presenting my arguments and things, that happened in the wee hours between sort of I don't know 2 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. or sometimes near all-nighters, you know, for most of my university career. Turning in my assignment either digitally or in person at the last minute or even having to ask for extensions because I was doing like three part-time jobs at the time and it's just juggling all the things. So, but that was just how I was. And people used to always tell me, "You're doing too many things. You need to try and do some more mindfulness. Maybe try some yoga." And I and I did. I was like, I loved yoga. This is great. And I really found myself in those when I was first going to yoga sort of as like a 15 year-old into my early 20s, it was like this constant chatter in my brain. And I'd arrive late to class and kind of find a little mat at the back and set myself up and like, you know, knock someone over the head with my drink bottle or something as I'm walking past. Of course, then I feel this judgment and this shame of turning up late and being there and then it's like this inner critic just constantly, but it defeats the whole purpose of what yoga and mindfulness is, you know. So I distinctly remember those sorts of things as being very patternistic for me. But it wasn't really until motherhood and the birth of my second child. I've got three kiddos. I'd been working in corporate prior to that for about 5 to 8 years and I was a sustainability manager working in-house at a multinational company here in New Zealand and I'd studied it to master's level and I was like "That's it. I'm going to help change the world and work from within businesses to help contribute to sustainable change from like a economic, societal, environmental point of view," right? And so that passion was always there, but I was like, how can I do this on my own terms? So, the end of 2019, when my baby was like, I don't know, coming on a year old and I had a toddler at the time, I was just like, I want to set up a consultancy business where I do this work. And I learned about partnership brokering and I was like, this is my jam. I managed to get some great clients and I was like, oh my god, this is working. Like, I've got the dream. I'm an entrepreneur. I've got revenue. This is happening. And honestly, I just felt so like I just was not coping and my parenting just was so misaligned. It wasn't how I thought I would parent. You know, I was trying to do this amazing client work and I'd have 12,000 tabs open, start like three or four emails, have multiple discussions going at a time, and like my bosses or the people that I was reporting to would be like, "Cool, how's it going on the XY Z project?" Oh, yeah. No, it's good. We have some good conversations with so and so, but it's like, oh, "But the delivery, you know, we need the... we need the thing, we need the stuff, like the document, the oh, the research or whatever." And it's like, I'll get there, you know? And then I just felt like such a square peg, square peg trying to fit into a round hole. And so I sought therapy in mid 2020 and to help me with my parenting and also this client work that I was just unable to kind of deliver on. And on my third visit into the therapist's office, just when we started to take the masks off and stuff, she just quietly listens to me ramble on. And then she goes, "Have you ever been assessed for ADHD by any chance?" And I was just like, "Isn't that the thing that like 9-year-old boys get diagnosed with and kind of grow out of when they're 25 or something?" And she's like, "No, that's and I've come to learn. This is a myth. This is a myth that we've been taught." And a lot of girls, especially high achieving girls and women go unnoticed and undetected in childhood and through through their teenage years and early adult life. I had the diagnosis, but I just knew that even regardless, I wanted to help women that coming to terms with a late diagnosis later in life. And so that's when I started my coaching training and all the other courses and programs and things, you know, got to spin all the plates, right? But yeah, it's been a multi-dimensional journey, that's for sure. 

JULIE: There are two sides to ADHD. There's our challenges and our strengths. It's I think it's a bit of a process and at some point through acceptance and understanding challenges and looking at ways to navigate them, then one can appreciate the strengths. But I think for a lot of people, it's very difficult when they're just beginning that journey and they haven't quite yeah, haven't quite got there. Today though we are here to talk about the ADHD Inquiry New Zealand. Yes. Now it's a grassroots unfunded movement calling on parliament to investigate the systemic harm experienced by ADHDers across health, education, justice and employment. So for those who might not be familiar, can you explain what this petition is aiming to achieve and why it matters right now? 

SIAN: Yeah. So thank you Julie. This is you know, we in the ADHD community and those who are advocating for the petition really are so grateful to be able to talk about this and with you and your listeners. And essentially the petition is calling for parliament to launch a public inquiry into systemic harm. And I'll go into what that means in a second, but it's not to blame anyone, but it's essentially to fix long-standing gaps that are across these sectors. You know, health, education, justice, and employment. And systemic harm itself actually means ongoing structural failures not only one singular bad experience for any one individual obviously or a group of people but it's more systemic than that. It's decades of fragmented policy missing data and uncoordinated support really. And it's estimated that around 280,000 New Zealanders have ADHD and that's you know larger than several regional populations in our country. And there's no coordinated cross- sector strategy. There's very little research as well as dedicated funding for these, for the community. And both the UK and Australia actually launched public inquiries back in 2023. And so we need to connect what's already working and make it sustainable really for the long term. Elspeth who's the named petitioner on this and myself, we can only really speak from our own worldview. We talk from our lived experience and we talk from listening to others and understanding the community and the needs. So you know the ADHD community is very diverse. Everyone's experience looks very different and that's why an inquiry matters. It's a mechanism that can gather voices from across Aotearoa with individuals, whanau, researchers, clinicians, charities and professionals, who might not otherwise be in the same room. You know if the inquiry goes through it'll be on record and lived experience in Hansard which in the parliament's permanent record meaning that the stories of the ADHD community become part of our national record and not scattered or lost. And it doesn't matter like which government is in power at any particular time but it's there no matter what. And so the inquiry if it goes ahead can actually make findings and recommendations including around funding and coordination to help support the community because it's now part of the parliament record. So with the petition's wording itself, it had to actually meet really strict criteria and character limit set by the petitions committee by actually submitting a petition to parliament. Then parliament must give a response to the signed petitioner and all of those who have signed. So after it closes the cross party petitions committee, so it's not just singular party, will decide whether or not to progress it to the next stage. And once it gets to that stage the named petitioner, Elspeth in this case, might get an opportunity to actually present the evidence to parliament. If it gets past the petitions committee it'll need cross party support to get approved by government. So essentially we're working within the system to try and help to improve it. And you know of course people will say but what's the point? They won't listen anyway. But the alternative of not trying is actually worse. And we can go into some of those statistics as well. Yes certainly hui and meetings and have happened and there's goodwill there for sure but they're few and far between and it's peace-meal really. So without public voices saying that this really matters, it could take years for further progress to actually happen. The ADHD community itself has spent decades masking, hiding our struggles, internalizing them all for the comfort of others. And we can't just keep doing that. And so essentially it's about stepping into visibility using the tools that we have calmly and collectively through the process and backing up what's already being advocated for and worked towards. And essentially the argument is that when people with ADHD thrive then classrooms, workplaces, families, and communities will all benefit. It's not about like dividing empathy. It's about expanding it essentially. 

JULIE: Thank you for explaining that. Absolutely. I read a lovely line that really summed it up and that "It's not about starting from scratch but about continuing the work that's already begun and then building upon that," and that feels really true because over the past 18 months there has been real progress. And you know we've seen PHARMAC funding new ADHD medications, hui in parliament and moving towards making assessments more accessible through GPs. But much of this progress has been driven by unfunded community efforts and we know that momentum is crucial. So why is sustainable government-backed funding so important get this work moving forward? 

SIAN: So far there has been progress and there has been forward momentum but a lot of it's come from volunteers and community advocates really not through funded leadership and this is crucial. So yes the PHARMAC changes, the pilots that have been undergone the hui that have been held, all rely on goodwill as I mentioned earlier and not on actual infrastructure. There was a study done by Deloitte in Australia back in 2019 which estimated that ADHD costs Australia 20.4 billion Aussie dollars a year which is about $25,000 per person with ADHD. You know, we'll share all these links to the research and the literature in this that we've got. Obviously, there's a poority of literature for New Zealand itself, which is why we're actually asking for an inquiry. But we can only go on what's been done internationally really and where other countries have launched inquiries or have better infrastructure in place to support the community. So, you know, if we scale those figures, those Australian dollar figures to New Zealand dollars, that's roughly about $7.5 billion every year, which are costs for our country essentially in terms of like lost productivity and other metrics that the Deloitte study goes into and that's including around $3.7 billion in lost potential essentially. And that's people who could be studying, working, and thriving if the right support did exist. Even without our own local data, it's clear that not supporting people with ADHD is already costing New Zealand billions of dollars, right? So, coordination really does matter. One example that really shows the progress and the challenge is the work that's already led by ADHD New Zealand. Darrin Bull told One News a little while ago that it took 5 years and 312 meetings to reach agreement and improvements to ADHD management. You know, that's an extraordinary commitment, but it also just shows how much progress still depends on a relentless individual effort. It shouldn't have to take hundreds of meetings and years of unpaid work essentially to make things happen. A public inquiry would help to build the structure and coordination to help make this progress systemic. And then what sustainable funding would actually enable is a like a national funded strategy would actually coordinate long-term planning, consistent training, prevention, and also equitable access for everybody.  It means that progress doesn't just keep depending on who has the energy to volunteer that year. And it would also of course mean, you know, better data, better outcomes and accountability that lasts well beyond election cycles. So, there's definitely really good reason as to why you know, this the ADHD Inquiry would lead to long-term sustainable outcomes that would benefit everybody. 

JULIE: Having local data is really important, too, so we know what we're dealing with. So, even pushing that to the forefront would be would be great. So we can have our own New Zealand stats. Absolutely. The ADHD Inquiry is a completely grassroots movement which is a real testament to the community and their passion and persistence. So what is it like seeing so many people come together to lend their voices to this cause? 

SIAN: Yeah, it has been completely organic really and it was just one of those things. I think it was early October or late September where it first came into my periphery through I think I was just looking up some hashtag on LinkedIn for ADHD awareness month or something like that. And then I saw the ADHD Inquiry and I looked into it and I was just like "Oh my god there's a petition for this." Like this is like you know, amplifying the voices of this, the struggle, and that's how I came on board. It was like I reached out to Elspeth and I was like, "Oh my goodness, I love this work that ADHD Inquiry New Zealand has put out there and I think that's how a lot of people have come on board. It's like they've seen it organically on their LinkedIn feeds or elsewhere and so it's been, you know, quietly powerful really and it's got over 700 signatures now. And this is, you know, which is pretty great for an unfunded campaign, that's been very policy focused, you know. It shows that it's real support and it's not just friends and family but people who are wanting to get their voices heard and recognizing their own experience around the petition and the reason for it. So of course not everyone can speak publicly on this. And you know, many are constrained by employers, boards or roles that they hold and so the... yeah. And I suppose one of the reason, one of the things that's essential to this Inquiry itself is that it's ADHD friendly. People can join in how they want. They can support it for as long as they want. They can share it once on one feed and just be done with it or just simply sign their name if they'd like or share it with friends and family. So, every share and every signature and quiet conversation on the topic really does matter. So, it's been it's been very encouraging and I'm looking forward to seeing how it grows going forward for sure. 

JULIE: The petition is open for signatures until the 30th of January 2026. So for anyone listening who wants to support the petition and help make their voices heard, whether they have ADHD or simply care about equity, what's the best way for them to get involved? 

SIAN: Yes. Cool. Great question. It's a very long link, so otherwise I'd simply share the link with you. But if people go to the New Zealand Parliament website, you can simply Google that. Anyone can sign with their name and email. They don't even need to be from New Zealand. It's more about getting voices behind this because ADHD isn't a national problem. It's a global experience that 

people have. And so you can go to the New Zealand Parliament website and filter by looking up just ADHD and it'll come straight up. You can also visit ADHDinquiry.nz to find out more. And the website also has a direct link to the petition itself. There's presence of the ADHD inquiry on LinkedIn, Facebook, Tik Tok as well as Instagram. And there's no asking for funding or donations. It's simply signatures, voices and a joint corridor really, and talking about it in your community, sharing the link with others and speaking to your... writing a letter or an email to your local MP will help to build visibility and cross party awareness about the campaign itself. So, every small act regarding this really does count and we welcome support from absolutely anywhere. Shared voices on this issue really do matter. 

JULIE: URLs that you've mentioned, I'll have them in the show notes for listeners to go and check out and follow through with. If you could share one message directly with the policy makers or educators or health leaders listening today, what would you most want them to understand about ADHD and about the kind of change that this inquiry is calling for? 

SIAN: Yeah, you know, the thing is too often, and this wording actually made it into the petition itself, too often ADHD gets treated like a personal failing. And to be honest, as I spoke through my own personal story with you earlier, that's how I felt throughout my life. And I still feel that today, although I have to say, I'm building a deeper sense of compassion and empathy for my experience of ADHD simply by seeing it reflected in the people that I support and the communities that I'm part of. You know, it's like, okay, we're in this together. This isn't just me. It's literally neurochemical and really also shaped by the environment and how stigmatized people feel in the you know, out there in the big wide world. So, you know, it is treated often like a personal failing or a behavioral issue that medication can fix or that medication is assumed alone might fix, which isn't always the case. And not everyone agrees with medication you know from like a body point of view or even a decision point of view. You know, people should be able to decide for themselves if that's something they wanted to pursue. You know, there's no quick fixes really for this. And there's essentially a gap in policy and understanding, you know, more broadly speaking on this. So, if our systems were actually designed with ADHD brains and in mind, then people with ADHD could live far better lives. And I mean, the statistics speak for themselves really when we look at incarceration rates. So there's been some research on this. Because young adults with ADHD in adulthood are actually twice more likely to face police action. More than two times more likely to be charged and more than two times more likely to be convicted. And so and then like between four and five times more likely to be imprisoned than their peers without ADHD. So this doesn't mean that people with ADHD are bad or criminals. Do you know what I mean? It's like an over representation simply because there's the net, the support isn't there to help these people thrive as they interact in community and life, right? And globally it's estimated between 25 and 55% of adults in prison meet ADHD criteria, but you know, we don't have any New Zealand data on that.  And harm isn't experienced equally. Maori and Pacifika and women and girls in New Zealand and their whanau actually you know face greater barriers to culturally safe care. And as we've even talked about earlier women and girls are often you know under-identified and rainbow communities often mismatched with services. So it when ADHD itself, you know, intersects with poverty, racism or gender bias, the harm only compounds and the voices that are most affected are least heard. So an inquiry would actually ensure that those missing voices are part of the record, not left out because they couldn't access the room, you know. So yeah it's I think it's really important to realize that it's not one thing that could be fixed with behaviour management or medication but you know, in education with teachers and having actual programs in place for them to better understand and perhaps even identify some of the signs to be able to talk with parents openly and then to be able to have supports and recommendations to put in case for families to start doing their own investigations to support their children. Essentially, it's about, you know, our whole communities thriving really across all the different sectors of our society. And so it's, and this is why I think that wording around systemic harm is so important because it's not only that's how it's been, but that doesn't have to be how it continues to be that way. Because once we flip the switch when you look at like my own work in my first career in sustainability, it is about the intersecting of the systems, you know, what systems are in place from like ecology and government and economy and things that like create the whole picture of how a system is failing, you know, from an environmental perspective. It's the same kind of thing here, you know. There's a way that we can move beyond the issues that people are facing on the daily and then struggles that teachers and education and doctors with inability to have the time to spend to actually like assess their potentially ADHD patients. It's like a whole systemic kind of lens on this this issue would bring a lot of those things to the surface where we can connect the dots and start creating kind of yeah, better supports in place so that there is a net there and not an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. 

JULIE: This kind of advocacy work takes enormous dedication and it's not easy to hold the line when progress depends on passion alone. So, is there anything else you'd like to add on a personal note or any hope you'd like to leave listeners with? 

SIAN: Yeah, absolutely. You know, this kopa really does build on the momentum that's already there, that there is so much work and there's so much passion for the ADHD community and neurodivergent community in general to thrive in society. And so the work has been kind of, the foundations have been laid by so many charities and people who dedicate their time to this and professionals that have been doing it for years. And it does it keeps pushing us towards lasting positive change and less stigma around ADHD. So the community has shown real leadership for decades. But what's missing now is coordination and accountability as I've said across the systems. We don't want the energy to get lost every time that someone burns out, you know, and burnout is a very real thing for ADHDers. This is important work for me and the work that I do. It like it speaks to my heart really. I was very nervous coming on here today and talking with you through this and obviously reading through some of these notes and making sure that I'm explaining everything and giving it the due reverence that it really does need to resonate with people. But, you know, I think people know in their hearts if it's something that they'd like to support and whether or not they have ADHD themselves or know and love someone who does. And they want to see children in classrooms across the country thrive and teachers feel supported in the work that they do. You know another statistic by the way which is worth sharing, I think it's around 7 to 9 years less life expectancy for people with ADHD and so there's you know, there's an average of like 7 to 9 years of less life expectancy and higher mortality rates with people with ADHD particularly when it's undiagnosed and not recognized. And a lot of this stuff comes from, a lot of this comes from perhaps impossible and depression and suicide rates with this community. It's like it's a very real thing. With a systemic lens on the issues at large on this it really does bring to light the potential effects and like the changes, the positive, beautiful changes that it can actually come to fruition if we were to really understand what the picture is for our country, for the ADHD community in general. So yeah, it's about a collective voice really. Many of us spend a lot of time in ADHD spaces where we feel safe and secure and supportive and supported. But out there in the world, many of us are alone still advocating for ourselves alone every day. But when we come together really it does change the whole story. One of the things that's crucial to understand about the ADHD brain and ADHD as in general is that many of us are very divergent thinkers able to kind of coordinate and understand and see like connections between seemingly disparate concepts. Right? So essentially we'd actually be an ideal group of people to help redesign some of the systems that weren't initially built with us in mind if we were given the chance. So thank you so much Julie for this opportunity. It's been wonderful to yeah to share all of this with you. 

JULIE: And I really appreciate your time and explaining all about the ADHD Inquiry New Zealand. And  remember the 30th of January for people to make their voices heard and their lived experiences known. So thank you Sian so much for today and wish you all the 

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Julie Legg

Host
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Jel Legg

Co-host
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Sian Flynn-Coleman

Guest