Published on 12, July, 2020
The week commencing 27 March is the designated 'Autism Awareness Week'.
Looking at the NAS articles, it seems to be all about fundraising, about baking cakes, going for a walk or holding a sponsored event. All very worthy, I am sure.
But aren't we missing something really important. The slogan is 'until everyone understands'. And what will everyone understand about autism if we just bake cakes or go for a walk? That there is a condition called 'autism'. That those who are autistic can bake cakes?
'Autism awareness week' should surely be an opportunity we should all use to state our case. Anyone who has been touched by autism, from parents and carers, relations, and those who are autistic themselves - should get involved in awareness where it really counts.
And that is by contacting the newspapers, writing letters to the media, writing to our MPs, lobbying parliament, writing to local councillors, and organising campaigns where the real issues relating to autism are stated. Issues such as lack of available diagnoses for adults, the waiting time for a diagnosis, the real lack of anything having been done under the 'Autism Strategy', the fact that NHS trusts do not offer any help at all to adults who may be on the spectrum. Many MPs are on Twitter and Facebook, we could message and tweet them. Get the broadcasters, local radio especially, interested in our cause. Write an article or letter for the local newspaper on the difficulties we face in everyday life, barriers put up not by us but by the attitude of others. This is surely as important as any amount of fundraising in raising awareness.
Daily I see discussions on this forum about problems autistic people and their carers are having with authority, funds being cut, barrers put in our way. And if we also let a wide audience know of these difficulties some of this may just begin to make others understand. Some seed may fall on stony ground, but if we all did communicate our issues to the media, our lawmakers, our local councillors then maybe, just maybe, we would begin to open a few doors in the barriers that are put in our way.
But how many of us will do this?
In reply to Blue Ray, I have a great deal of respect for your views and realise there is more than one route to a destination. But what I am attempting to getting across that the 'Awareness Week' seems to not have a very high profile and appears to miss the target by a long way.
If the purpose of 'Awareness Week' is to make people aware, then one would expect articles in the daily papers, articles on the radio and television, interviews with people affected by autism, explanations in the press as to what the effect of Autism on someone is and the many forms it can take. A chance to publicise that more support should be upcoming, that it is very diffiucult to get a diagnosis as an adult, and we should explain that doctors generally are quite ignorant of how people are affected.
I don't want to rehash my original post, on reading it again I think I put it as well as I possibly could. Yes, we can bake cakes, we can go on a walk, we can wear a brightly coloured tee shirt. But such things on their own will only get us lost in the general 'Awareness Weeks' of other campaigns and charities. What we should be doing, and directed towards, is heping put our real message across That those who are autistic in its many manifestations are very much in need of help and support. And the higher profile this gets the more genuine 'awareness' of the condition there will be.
I guess it might be easier to say what their targets are, which ones they haven’t reached yet and what they propose to do to reach the targets they haven’t managed to reach yet. Lol!
It sounds like you’re in agreement with the campaign and it’s goals/targets, but that you would like to see more wide spread coverage across popular media? I guess people who use social media could help there but getting exposure on television is pretty costly, I don’t know about radios and newspapers seem to like to sell sensational stories about how terrible things are etc so I’m not sure how NAS or autistic people go about getting their stories in newspapers.
Does NAS give autistic people any say in the campaigns?