Autism Went Mainstream. The Systems Did Not.

We’ve run Think Autism four times now and I still can’t predict how the day will go. This year a theatre full of autistic advocates, practitioners, entrepreneurs, academics and community members spent the day talking about what’s actually working and what isn’t. Mostly what isn’t.

One thing kept coming back. Autism is everywhere as a word now, but the systems around it have barely shifted. There are lanyards and posters and a rush of social posts every April, and then there’s the harder stuff that nobody updates: the policies, the workplaces, the money. Most of the day lived in that gap between what gets said and what actually happens.