Thinking about creating a group for people with autism in work

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:

• Do you think this is a good idea?
• If so would you take part?
• What do you think are some really important areas for the group to focus on?