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Argument, Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2023
Panellists predicted demand for autistic led programs and warned of burnout by 18
In short
At the first Autistic Pride Day Symposium, panellists said autistic leadership was becoming an expectation, and Rebecca McCash argued that education itself was where change was most needed.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
Asked at the 2023 Autistic Pride Day Symposium what was coming next for autistic led programs, a panellist predicted that autistic people and their parents would start demanding them. Before the session closed, Rebecca McCash of FutureTech said change was most needed in education itself. Many autistic young people, she said, were reaching adulthood already burnt out by school.
The first panellist asked by Kyriakos Gold, who hosted the session, said they expected to see more and more autistic led programs, because autistic people and parents would start demanding more involvement of autistic people in all kinds of programs for autistic people, which made sense. The panellist said they could not wait to see the consequences. The young people they work with have so much to offer the world, the panellist said, adding that most of them were taller than the panellist. “all of these outdated medieval systems are just like holding them back”, the panellist said, and the hope was to see what they could achieve with places and spaces that accept who they are.
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Sources the story draws on
- Kids with autism don't need to be cured, guidelines say (opens in a new tab), The Canberra Times (Australian Associated Press, Tara Cosoleto)
- Autism in Australia, 2022 (opens in a new tab), Australian Bureau of Statistics
- "Having All of Your Internal Resources Exhausted Beyond Measure and Being Left with No Clean-Up Crew": Defining Autistic Burnout (opens in a new tab), Autism in Adulthood (Dora Raymaker and colleagues)
More from Autistic Pride Day Symposium 2023
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2 minutes 38 seconds, captioned Neurotype, culture or disorder, the first symposium’s closing dialogue began with language Kyriakos Gold Asked what autism is, speakers at the close of the 2023 Autistic Pride Day Symposium in Melbourne described a brain style and a culture, and split on whether the word disorder should stay.