• Replies 11 replies
  • Subscribers 83 subscribers
  • Views 341 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related
Hints and tips
  • To quote someone's message, first select/highlight the relevant text, and then use the Quote button that appears
  • To "mention" someone, type @ followed by the start of the forum name, and choose from the list; that person will get a notification of being mentioned

Autism (not so) friendly

Expecto_Patronum

Has anyone noticed the rise in so called autism friendly services of late. People seem to be able to label their business (or whatever it is) autism friendly without having to do anything to prove it or become certified. In my small experiences of these people they are never as autism friendly as they think they are. A recent experience (don't want to go into detail just on the small chance the person could see this post) in which somebody had declared their business to be autism friendly and aware of sensory needs turned out that they had zero idea about sensory needs and in fact actually caused me sensory issues. I find this frustrating and a little concerning. I think this person genuinely believes that they are autism friendly and that their service will make a difference. I don't think businesses should be allowed to label themselves as autism friendly unless they have been certified to show that they actually are. I just get frustrated with situations like this as it feels like autistic life is always 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

Parents

  • I hear you loud and clear (I experienced a shocking example of one last year - they were teaching people (from service providers) how to be Autism-friendly ...and were not themselves so ...in the very least!  Even their legislative materials were woefully out of date ...and those were the highlight.  Engagement with them was discouraging, disappointing and damaging).

    Now we could all do our spirits a favour - by trying to balance things a bit (no names needed to be quoted) - it would just be good to know such positive outfits - deserving of the "Autism-friendly" accolade actually do also exist.

  • in reply to DormouseAtRest_25

    Yes this is another good point actually. I did an autism qualification during lockdown. Not because I felt I needed to update my knowledge - but because I didn't have anything to prove my knowledge and we had to do CPD for work whilst working from home. It was an incredibly frustrating qualification that was really outdated and still referred to things like the triad of impairments which is no longer referred to as that. I had the knowledge to know that much of the qualification was wrong but I remember thinking there must be so many people that are getting their autism knowledge from these courses and it's totally wrong.

Reply
  • in reply to DormouseAtRest_25

    Yes this is another good point actually. I did an autism qualification during lockdown. Not because I felt I needed to update my knowledge - but because I didn't have anything to prove my knowledge and we had to do CPD for work whilst working from home. It was an incredibly frustrating qualification that was really outdated and still referred to things like the triad of impairments which is no longer referred to as that. I had the knowledge to know that much of the qualification was wrong but I remember thinking there must be so many people that are getting their autism knowledge from these courses and it's totally wrong.

Children
  • in reply to Expecto_Patronum

    Sounds like we could have "benefitted" from the same course material.

    What compounded the hassle: surrounded the behaviour of the course delivering organisation - really poor on so many aspects.

    I wish I had asked around a bit more before I enrolled - as I later discovered: my type of experiences with the delivering organisation were commonplace and well known locally - to the extent that - to safeguard some students (on other runs of the same course) - their adult mental health advocates had found it necessary to step into supporting the resolution dialogue!