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Community issues and AS

longman

How effectively is autism and aspergers represented in community forums at local authority level?

There are a lot of fora that deal with equality issues across a spectrum of subjects, some quite unusual but important nonetheless, that are addressed at local council level to ensure different groups have a say in policy decisions affecting communities. These include things like disability and housing, disability disclosure in relation to housing services and adult support, social, sport and entertainment access in relation to disability.

They are used to air and gauge public response to policy changes and new systems.

Many groups send representatives to these. In my experience autism is seldom represented. This seems to be because the main local autism groups are around children and dealt with through specific meetings. Lack of resources to provide people and lack of identified need to address adult needs seem to be prominent reasons for non-representation.

I've done a lot of this over the years (committees get me out and involved, as long as they are civilised and well-managed as my heatring and speech coordination suffers when lots of people are talking at once).

When I can I try to speak up for autism issues where relevant, but I'm not representing anyone. I feel that autism isn't being picked up where it should be because of this lack of representation, for example funding opportunities ior changes to services that could have a knock on effect on people on the spectrum.

Is there any strategy for improving the visibility of autism at local authority level?

Parents

  • Having started this thread on the subject of reprsentation on community forums, I was neatly side-tracked into trying to find out what my county council was doing about autism.  And it is vitally important surely as we keep being asked as NAS members to write to our MPs or council scrutiny committees, but how many councils have actually set up commissioners/leads for autism and autism partnership boards?

    My council had declared on the NAS website in January 2011 that it already had an autism lead, and expected to have an autism partnership board set up within 6 months. Ever since then I've been trying to contact it. I've been as they say "passed from pillar to post" or rather from one alleged lead officer to another.

    I've now been told that my county council is using its existing Learning Disabilities Partnership Board. I've written to the contact person for this, so far no reply.But my county council's website, while it has pages for learning disability, there is nothing stated about autism. There is nothing anywhere to tell people that the Learning Disability Partnership Board is substituting as the Autism Partnership Board.

    According to the Department of Health a council can use an existing body like a Learning Disability Partnership Board, as long as they can demonstrate that it achieves the same objectives as an Autism Partnership Board. But if no-one knows this is what is being done, how can this be a meaningful substitute?

    Has anyone else tried to find out what their local authority is doing for autism?

Reply

  • Having started this thread on the subject of reprsentation on community forums, I was neatly side-tracked into trying to find out what my county council was doing about autism.  And it is vitally important surely as we keep being asked as NAS members to write to our MPs or council scrutiny committees, but how many councils have actually set up commissioners/leads for autism and autism partnership boards?

    My council had declared on the NAS website in January 2011 that it already had an autism lead, and expected to have an autism partnership board set up within 6 months. Ever since then I've been trying to contact it. I've been as they say "passed from pillar to post" or rather from one alleged lead officer to another.

    I've now been told that my county council is using its existing Learning Disabilities Partnership Board. I've written to the contact person for this, so far no reply.But my county council's website, while it has pages for learning disability, there is nothing stated about autism. There is nothing anywhere to tell people that the Learning Disability Partnership Board is substituting as the Autism Partnership Board.

    According to the Department of Health a council can use an existing body like a Learning Disability Partnership Board, as long as they can demonstrate that it achieves the same objectives as an Autism Partnership Board. But if no-one knows this is what is being done, how can this be a meaningful substitute?

    Has anyone else tried to find out what their local authority is doing for autism?

Children
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