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Do further education disability departments receive Autism training?

stranger

Some of you may have seen a thread by me in Living on the spectrum.

Basically, I had a meeting on Tuesday with disability services at college to see what help they could offer me. It ended up with them and my support worker deciding that I'm not Autistic and I'm just lonely and need counselling. (ok, the last bit is true; but for a completely different reason) The argument was based on the fact that she thinks her father has it and I'm nothing like him. I can think of many people on the spectrum who I'm nothing like. And it's because I also don't have a proper diagnosis. No-one has actually said I don't have it either.

The college are running a course on Autism in June. Should be interesting to see what they get wrong...

Parents

  • That does seem rather a bad experience. There should be a body of knowledge in most FE and HE institutions by now. Having been involved in disability support at academic level in HE for about a decade, I helped, or supported colleagues to help a number of students on the spectrum. They were all very different from one another. The big problem is getting good support material on supporting students on the spectrum.

    When I started doing this about 2001 there was only one guide available within my discipline, written by a new university which had had ONE AS student, and they centred their entire guide around him. You would hope things have moved on.

    There are a number of problems with training. In many institutions support staff do not get training in disability needs unless they pay for it/find time to attend in their own time. Courses are often provided for teaching staff, but they often cannot get away because if they are not teaching they are stuck in meetings.

    Courses are seldom in house but bought in, which is costly. Such sessions too often are discussion based (you sit around in fours discussing what you don't know, and then the facilitator demonstrates he/she knows nothing either).

    So it doesn't surprise me that you've encountered someone whose only insight is what her Dad's like. Fact is many institutions have failed to take it seriously. They just provide note takers, extra time in exams, coloured paper handouts....supposedly to create a level playing field.

    That said, there are many institutions that are doing it right. Trouble is you usually have to go to your local FE establishment and if its a naff one you're stuck. Or increasingly its a subsidiary after a take-over and the main disabity support staff are on the other campus in another town.

    NAS this might be one for a fresh campaign?

Reply

  • That does seem rather a bad experience. There should be a body of knowledge in most FE and HE institutions by now. Having been involved in disability support at academic level in HE for about a decade, I helped, or supported colleagues to help a number of students on the spectrum. They were all very different from one another. The big problem is getting good support material on supporting students on the spectrum.

    When I started doing this about 2001 there was only one guide available within my discipline, written by a new university which had had ONE AS student, and they centred their entire guide around him. You would hope things have moved on.

    There are a number of problems with training. In many institutions support staff do not get training in disability needs unless they pay for it/find time to attend in their own time. Courses are often provided for teaching staff, but they often cannot get away because if they are not teaching they are stuck in meetings.

    Courses are seldom in house but bought in, which is costly. Such sessions too often are discussion based (you sit around in fours discussing what you don't know, and then the facilitator demonstrates he/she knows nothing either).

    So it doesn't surprise me that you've encountered someone whose only insight is what her Dad's like. Fact is many institutions have failed to take it seriously. They just provide note takers, extra time in exams, coloured paper handouts....supposedly to create a level playing field.

    That said, there are many institutions that are doing it right. Trouble is you usually have to go to your local FE establishment and if its a naff one you're stuck. Or increasingly its a subsidiary after a take-over and the main disabity support staff are on the other campus in another town.

    NAS this might be one for a fresh campaign?

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