Acceptance
All people have the right to participate, contribute and be valued. Human progress had always been dependent upon a range of contributions and skills.
Adaptation
Our role is not to 'fix' people but to provide support. Everyone needs support in order to operate as part of society, this varies throughout all our lives.
Achievement
To provide meaningful education and employment opportunities. Provide full participation and redress power inequalities within society through active promotion and creation of jobs at all levels of all organisations and government. To hold the highest education expectations for all people taking account of their needs and giving the right support to achieve.
Treatment or change therapies- NO THANK YOU
Some people believe that autistic people should, and can be, trained/educated to be like ‘normal’ people. The desire to ‘normalise’ people can cause anxiety for children and young people and raises serious questions regarding social acceptance of difference.
The use of rewards to help change young people’s responses to different stimulus and social situations can be helpful in keeping them safe but should never be used to make them 'act' like another person.
There are organisations that use the term ‘cure’ in describing the intervention that they can provide. These can sometime promote the idea that autistic people are all suffering from an inability to communicate their feelings or thoughts and are ‘normal people' trapped inside their autism’.
Those organisations sometimes present hope for the many families who struggle to get access to statutory services and for those who, because of personal or social pressures, find it difficult to accept their child. The advertising presented by those organisations often focuses upon those vulnerabilities experienced by parents who have not been able to access information and support.
Why would you think you are normal?