Since 2018, I have been volunteering for my local branch of the National Autistic Society in South Lanarkshire and during the pandemic I became one of the branch’s co-chairpersons.
As we were approaching the school summer holidays of 2022 which many of you will recall was the first time since 2019 there was no legal restrictions in place on how we went about our day to day lives. This sounds good for families with having more places to go and enjoy during 7 weeks off school.
However, for families with autistic children the school holidays can be very challenging. Many places are busy and crowded which can be overwhelming and make things difficult. To top that off, with the impact of financial pressures of 2 years of covid restrictions and increased running costs through the rises to gas and electricity many places had to make cuts. Many took the decision to withdraw previous support such as autism quiet sessions and staff who had previously completed training and awareness were no longer there.
A group of families collectively reached out to the branch to raise concerns. Luckily for them myself and a colleague had recently completed training to deliver Understanding Autism Talks to businesses and community groups. We immediately set to work delivering sessions to local museums and other visitor attractions. Over the years since then many of the attractions and shops we have delivered this to have made changes to their processes and environment to become more autism friendly. Since delivering the talk we have also built-up relationships with the attractions allowing us to run joint events, one of which that has been particularly beneficial has been a local zoo who have allowed us to run several art and craft sessions and an animal handling experience.
It is important to highlight that all this work is delivered by an army of volunteers across the country and we need to fully self-fund all of this through community fundraising efforts. You can find out more about branches across the country on the National Autistic Society’s website.
Written by Andrew Crosbie.