Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
I’m trying to gauge interest in something.
I’m autistic and work in policy/social research, I have been doing quite a lot of work recently in the diversity space; I keep hearing that people with disabilities, and particularly autism, don’t seem to be able to get on employers profiles in the same way that other underrepresented groups can (e.g. BAME, LGBT, and gender groups). I’ve also heard this repeated by people I know in the public, private, and third sector, and just looking at forms like this see loads of people are having a tricky time at work and really shouldn’t be if the system is set up properly. I was mulling this over with some friends who do a lot of work with women’s/gender groups and I think the answer might be that we lack our own support network.
In recent years there's been loads of success, particularly for women and the BAME community, in creating networks of like-minded people with shared experiences to support each other. Sometimes this is mentoring people in a similar career, sometimes it is just a matter of being a sounding board, letting people know about opportunities for interesting jobs, and even warning people away from the places that aren’t friendly or safe.
And I think this is something the neuro-diverse community could also find really useful.
I’ve had a bit of a look around and can’t find anything; the closest I’ve been pointed to (by some of the big autism charities) have all been managed by healthcare professionals and social workers or even designed for people who work with autistic people as opposed to people with autism themselves, and don’t really seem interested in empowering neuro-diverse people themselves.
Setting up these sorts of things isn’t overly different from what I do in my working life and it’s something I think could make a real difference so I’m happy to give it a shot, but before I do so I want to see if there is real demand. So I'm posting here to see:
I think it's a good idea, and if there's a group like this nearby I would love to join! I think it could potentially make a real difference on people's lives. Like you said, these networks can help people support each other by sharing similar experiences, letting people know about job opportunities, and provide mentoring advice. I would really love a group like this. But I can also imagine some of the difficulties being that there's only about 1% of the population with ASD, and each person might have different jobs, or live in different areas, or have a large difference in age, it might be hard to find overlap in all aspects. But I think it's definitely worth a try!
Cheers, I agree the point around numbers is one of my biggest concerns. In part this is why I am possibly leaning towards trying to make it open to the neuro diverse community in general (often pretty similar experiences but a wider group bringing in ADHD dyspraxia etc), I also suspect in part the answer will have to be trying to make it quite accessible online, I'm based in London so I suspect there's enough people around for physical meet ups, but I suspect for those outside big cities having a strong online presence would be really important to let them take part
Yeah, making it open to the neurodiverse community in general is a good idea. There's a division in the student union at my university that has a facebook group for all neurodiverse people (including those who self-identify). And there's quite a lot of mutual understanding between all kinds of neurodiversity. I think being in London would definitely help with finding people! I don't live in London, so I could imagine having an online option would be helpful for those that live outside London to take part. Also, you might want to check out the support network Tinyexployer's mentioned.