Dear Bobby,
I have been thinking about what to write about for a few days now and I am drawn again to the subject of autistic people in employment.
As we are approaching world autism acceptance week, I have been struck yet again at how it is estimated that only 29% of autistic adults are in employment. I find this statistic shocking and so frustrating when I think of people like me that have struggled with employment over many years.
So I wanted to explore my thoughts on the current disability confident scheme, and why I think it should be supplemented by a neuro diversity confident scheme to help recognise those employers that see value in employing autistic individuals.
In my own experience, what has been clear to me is that the current disability confident scheme that many organisations use has the potential to forget about those individuals that consider themselves to be disabled by the environment around them or who have hidden disabilities.
There are many people such as myself that consider themselves to be disabled, but not specifically because of their own autism, but disabled by the NT world around them. I hear this time and time again when I talk to my fellow autists about the barriers and challenges they face.
When I worked for the NHS as a nurse, I recall looking at the Workplace Disability Equality Standard (WDES) report on the figures of disabled staff within the most senior NHS pay band roles. The stats show a disparity between the bulk of employees within the organisation that have declared a disability and those at the top that make and take decisions.
I understand that those within the most senior roles are much fewer than the wider workforce, but it still creates a glass ceiling for disabled and neuro-divergent staff alike. I believe this is one of the reasons that I was managed out of the NHS trust that I worked for, if you ignore for a moment the equality act and mechanisms such as occupational health. If you have a person who is unable to relate or show empathy for ND staff, the double empathy effect is a culture of NT decisions adversely affecting ND staff.
The reason why I said to ignore the equality act and OH support if because even with these, there are those who will routinely be seen as square pegs in round holes. In my situation I was managed as a NT nurse, the typical acute ward nursing role and the round hole standard that I was held against was never going to fit.
Each and every time I was referred back to occupational health, the management was seeking the answer to how to get the square peg me to fit into the NT round hole nurse. I realise that there is often a lot more involved but the ping pong between those making decisions and those providing support left me feeling stuck in the middle and without the empathy and recognition I needed.
This is why I believe that for employers to show themselves as disability confident, they are often forgetting to take into consideration those ND staff that with adjustments could be supported into employment. If you have a ND inclusive culture that runs throughout your organisation, then surely you are more likely to attract talent and retain valuable staff.
I often think about the size of the NHS workforce, which I believe is approx 1.4 million people. This would mean an estimated 14,000 ND staff work within our sector potentially unaware of why they might be struggling. The 1 in 100 estimate for ND people is quite probably greater meaning an ever greater chunk of the NHS is neuro-divergent.
This is why I think that organisations such as the NHS should employ a new ND confident standard, that shows to employees that they recognise and value the many transferable skills that can be brought by seeing the world a little differently. How an organisation the size of the NHS could instil an ND inclusive culture that encapsulates the widest possible range of roles and at every level.
In the same way autism has moved from autism awareness to autism acceptance, isn’t it time that disability confident includes a wider neurodisability confident scheme?
I would be interested in the thoughts of others, because acceptance needs to cover how companies are pro-active in nurturing a ND inclusive culture. I think that is the only way that the 29% figure I talked about at the start will increase.
Autism and Lee 