Autism Network Scotland's national forum

2 ELAS folks attended the first meeting of ANS's revived forum - Iast week. From ANS -

ANS was delighted to facilitate a new meeting of its formerly long-running Asperger’s Forum on Mar 16, last week. Members held the autistic-led forum online via Skype.

If you identify as autistic, we would like you to join our next discussion (diagnosis not required). You can listen, text or speak – choose what’s comfortable for you.
Join us to share experiences.
Join us to be heard.
Join us to influence change.
Name the group! Please bring your ideas for the group name to the next meeting - date and time to be announced here soon.

The forum is open to any autistic people (diagnosed or self-identifying) who live in Scotland. If you would be interested in hearing more, or joining the forum, you can email lynsey.stewart@strath.ac.uk

guilt by quack theory

SOMEONE POSTING ON THE STURGEON/SALMOND SCANDAL HEARINGS - I have a background in understanding and teaching non-verbal communication having studied it at length, and delivered workshops and training to a multitude of groups including trainee psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, police officers and social workers.

ME - As a civil liberty concern towards this idea of "teaching non-verbal communication" from involuntary mannerisms not intended to be communication at all. - Post-traumatic stress and autism are both things that can make innocent folks show the same nerves or blanked emotion, as hasty or high-handed police/psychiatrists/teachers like to interpret as showing guilt.
Does what you are teaching incorporate that fact and avoidance of that danger? It can only be moral if it does.

spectrumites out of Carstairs hospital !

On the scandal, that was a Sunday Post headline www.sundaypost.com/fp/one-little-step-followed-another-and-no-one-would-listen-to-us-and-no-one-would-speak-to-us-and-all-the-little-steps-took-us-into-hellrestriction-on-an-individual-should-be-the-minimum-restriction-ne/, of putting autistic young adults who had got into vaguely defined behavioural situations ,but no crime, into Carstairs. Then of their families' distress at not enough access to hold to account how they are getting treated in there, which is too hard.

Call for it stopped: http://chng.it/2KKy6dKDFk

anonymous reporting page against ABA

To join in circulating internationally this link, a Facebook page created for anonymous reporting of items that demonstrate abuse from ABA - Applied Behaviour Analysis. For circulation + passing on. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1607597726095052/
In the community of independently living aspie adults we don't tend to encounter ABA. But for any who are in the mental health system, concern at what agendas they could encounter out of public sight always matters.
Mainly it is happening for kids: if you google ABA in Scotland you will find it being targetted at kids. I'm a survivor of a CAMHS unit with the same attitude of dictating for personal changes as ABA rests on. Stopping it matters: it conflicts with natural self-discovering development which rests on liberty.

ANS forum relaunching

ELAS had close relations with this when it last ran 2007-16.

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As you may know the Asperger Forum took place at the University of Strathclyde for a number of years. The Forum produced 2 documents, An Ordinary Life and An Ordinary Life Too. The Forum is also an opportunity for autistic individuals to meet and discuss relevant issues and topics, with a view to this information being fed back to professionals at both a grass roots and strategic level.

We think now would be a good time to start the Forum again, and are looking for individuals who might be interested in joining the Forum. The Forum is led by autistic individuals, with facilitation support from Autism Network Scotland. Members are invited to come to meetings to discuss issues, topics or focus areas that are important to them. The discussions' outcomes are intended for sharing, via local and national autism strategy connections or to the professional circles connected to the issues. ANS can facilitate this and group members make choices arising.

The Asperger’s Forum membership is open to any autistic adult living in Scotland. Initially meetings will be held online, by routes that participants can best access, but we hope that in the future we can have a mix of online and face-to-face meetings.

If you would be interested in hearing more about the Forum or in becoming a member you can contact Lynsey at lynsey.stewart@strath.ac.uk.

We would also ask that you take part in this short survey to help us develop the Asperger Forum as we move forward.

www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/YPFBJKS

stand with "Neuroclastic" site's fight for Osime Brown against global apartheid cruelty

Worse than Prison: immigration detention could kill Osime Brown.

Neuroclastic is an awful sounding word I hope won't catch on, + name for a site. Wish it had defied our scene's policers of language, not let them push it to change to this name.

Far more important than that, extremely morally important + pressing, it is trying to act as the spectrumite scene's focus to fight against global apartheid's arbitrary racist destruction of a spectrumite life. Namely, the atrocity of deportating to Jamaica an autistic man who has no connections or sources of support there, has lived in Britain since age 4.

When folks are deported, they are usually taken through customs at the destination country and then left at the airport. From there, most often, it’s on them to fend for themselves. In this case an autistic young man with high support needs, PTSD, and a severe heart condition. In advance of which, getting moved to an immigration detention prison on Oct 7. Read the article.

Evil people habitually

• - are noncommittal
• - use the word "unfortunately"
• - talk rhetorically of reality
• - call moral issues grey
• - say they would rather blot them out of thought

#globalapartheid #autistic #OsimeBrown #deportation

not to bounce back

The most blessed thing to miss and forget about, during the life of lockdown emergency, has been the sight of bouncers. The oppression that they are and they redolate, the sheer wrong structure of a society that has them. Their blue armband identity badges ooze repulsively the official stamp on a designed oppression.

Parts of life that more thoughtful folks avoid, during the locdkown it has heen possible to even forget that we had forgotten them. In Kirkcaldy today, first time there since the travel rules eased, it was a real disgusted yuk moment to see blue badged bouncers, and remember they exist, on a laid-out outdoor pub on a verandah. Very continental, except that classically France"s streetside cafes are not behind bouncers!

It was packed full, not even looking socially distanced, with folks who had chosen the down-yo-earth culture of drinking out, even underthe shadow of getting past those. By comparison the big beach was almost deserted, 2 household groups on its whole length. Its coastal location seems wasted on its people.

A permanent society shift left by Covid may be that we meet up more online in our own little video bubbles, That the habit stucks because it is practical. Less tie to gping out and meeting up in person, leafs to less gatekeeping. Less going to places with bouncers, so that they are seen less and start to become outdated. Good riddance.

31 Jul 2020