Published on 12, July, 2020
I’ll make a poll for this later when I’m on my laptop. However the question I put to you is this. Should there exist local organisations in the major cities patterned like student unions but with the specific aim of serving autistic adults.
such organisations would:
notes:
What about groups for neurodivergents in already existing venues organised by already existing organised structure with their own funding. Like schools and universities for kids and students. For adults it could be organised by the church, health/mental facilities, LGBTQ community or an organisation for human rights. It could be organised as a monthly meeting simply, so basically any owner of a multifunctional space can start an event like that. Well those events in different places could be done by the "union" that you are suggesting but it would solve the logistics as a start. Otherwise, I see it as any other organisation that is funded by donations and partly by other bodies, as the mentioned above، so you can't predict the size or scale or where you could have this venue. I can predict that in smaller cities or rural areas, which make big part of a country, this second option wouldn't be easy to do.
Incidentally you’re right this model isn’t practical for rural areas. Delivery of basically all services to rural areas except for A few essential services like post office and GP surgeries now involves people travelling into cities and I’m afraid that’s probably going to hold true for autistic people as well
Might be worth if this does go forwards to create a trial of sorts I think you'd have to poll members here on which of the big cities folks are closest to, or at least say what city is nearest to you and see if others in the same or similar distance would be interested in getting it started with some irl logistics, finding a place for you to set up etc.
thanks for adding Bristol
I heard, but don't know how true it is as I've not yet had chance to research it, that the south west has a higher rate of ND people than the rest of the country
It looks like Manchester is winning. Its too far for me right now. But I’m going go for a job interview there tomorrow. If I get it I’ll be commuting in twice a week. If that happens maybe we can look at getting some volunteers together and making some funding applications.
are then you and I are coming at this from different angles. You’re thinking multiple groups might want to self organise. I’m thinking about a site for a test case. My thinking is if you can demonstrate it works once in one place you might be able to get the buy in from bigger organisations to roll this sort of scheme out more widely.
it’s always outrageously hard to be the 1st to do anything. being the 2nd to do something is a lot easier. because when you’re asking for help you can point to the first and say ‘look in principle this can work’ and people will be more inclined to dedicate resources to your endeavour.
i’m particularly thinking about the lottery funding. you can get just under £10,000 for a year long project through the lottery. but if you’re going to do something like that you have to pick the place that has the best chance of breaking through and being really successful so as to encourage people to pour more money into it after the first year is over. and also because it’ll be a really powerful example if you want to apply to do the same thing somewhere else later.
realistically £10,000 most of it is going to go on the venue Lease. If you’re lucky you have enough leftover for one full-time worker at minimum wage. Which means a scheme like this would need a lot of volunteer help to keep it running.