Autists For Change

This is our system of support to help people with autism improve their lives, and the lives of the people after them. “Our system,” which is our way to change the education system, stems from the 4 s’s. The big 4, as we call it, consist of the following: support, self-advocacy, system-changing, and smiles 😀! “Our system” is our way of bringing change to school systems for all future generations of autists, and the current generation of students in school. From where we stand, the current system in place works for the people enacting the system, not the people in the system. This is a serious issue, and one that needs to be resolved sooner rather than later.

Support

Our mission is to provide support for children, specifically those with autism. Our goal is to help people receive equal opportunity for success and improving their lives for the long term. We attempt methods that have worked for each individual person on the autism spectrum, based on their diagnosis. We know that each person is different, which is why no two therapies or methods are the same for each child. Most importantly, we like to have children be who they are-not try to change them into neurotypical people. Support is key to helping autistic people become successful, but not all therapies and supports are as successful as they seem. ABA, for example, can be a great way to help some Autistic people if done right. However, many Autism self-advocates consider ABA harmful, forcing autistic people to be appear more neurotypical. Often success rates in ABA are extraordinarily high, due to the low bars set for success and the ways in which success is measured.

Trial and error is one of the most challenging things for an autistic person to go through. It requires a lot of change, and often when the child may feel like a school or therapy is working, or even if they don’t, their support team will determine that their placement is ineffective and change the kind of support they receive. To this point, Sam, the founder, says, “I personally went through a lot of different therapies, and I thought that there has to be a better way of finding what was best for me. Different types of people with autism need different therapies, or therapies done differently. I felt like there must have been someone like me before me, acting how I had, and had to go through the same struggles of therapy that I went through. I feel that there should be a way to have people with similar diagnoses try what had worked for other people that had the same or similar symptoms. That way, less people would be forced to try so many different things before finding what they needed to make it work. “

Self-Advocacy

The Autists for change support mentality relies heavily on self-advocacy. Self-advocacy is crucial, as it allows autistic people like us to get their feelings out there. When we can voice ourselves what needs change, often this is far more effective than having others guess for us. When we advocate for what we need, we can help improve our own lives for the better. The education system is difficult for us and the teachers who teach us, but with the right advocacy, we can make the lives of us, and everyone around us, easier. Communication is useful in just about everything, from making friends, to getting the help we need. Special education teachers often push us to communicate. However, often, we can’t, or won’t, communicate with them. The key is to communicate our needs kindly and effectively, and, as a result, bringing the social emotional supports we need for ourselves, and paving the way for those to come.

People often don’t believe what people with autism tell them, they think we can’t make sense of things. Here at Autists for Change, we help Autistic people build up their confidence so that when they do advocate for themselves, it drastically raises the likeliness for people to listen. Sam says, “My school has had me advocate for myself to get some things that bothered me changed, and they listened to me, because I know me best. Trust that you know yourself best, and schools should believe you too. Self-advocacy is a very important way to get your voice heard, and having your voice heard can lead to change for the better.”

System-Changing

Our main goal at Autists for Change is to change the special education and psychological treatment for autistic people. The system is broken, and together we can fix it, and change can start right here. So far, there have been many treatments and supports already attempted to help autistic people. Many of the people designing these treatments have good intentions, but, for most recipients, ineffective execution. That being said, therapies like ABA have worked for many autistic people of specific backgrounds. That said, many people who have gone through it have pointed out that repetitive actions that try to stifle people’s autism and make them more like a neurotypical person is harmful. We each have our own needs, and we need to try to get the system to acknowledge the things that do not work for us-many strategies are used to try to support us, and many of them are standardized. These standardizations, for the most part, are effective only to those running the system, and in disregard to those receiving the supports.

When the system of disability support does not reflect the changes in research that have been made since the 90s, something is up. This system that has people of all different diagnoses and abilities, and it is mostly standardized. The number of differences one person has to another, especially in the special education system is astounding. What is also astounding is that those people with massive differences are receiving the same “treatment” as each other. It may work for one of them, and it may work for both of them, but the chances are that it works for one, or neither of them. But the one who it doesn’t work with, will keep receiving this treatment. What I’m saying is that we need to make the system more flexible, something we can do together, and something that we, and future generations need. We need change to the system, and that is one of our end goals with Autists for Change.

Smiles

By advocating for ourselves, and improving the system as best we can, life can be easier for autistic people. We can put smiles on the faces of people who had been affected by the system: a smile for what they have improved, and a smile for their roles in fixing it. This is why, at autists for change, we want to hear your voice. The more you speak, the more you can involve yourself in the crucial change that is yet to come. We can bring smiles to the faces of children who are in the system, they are happier because of what has happened to the system that was improved. And finally, we can smile ourselves because, by advocating for ourselves and pushing for change, we have effectively changed this detrimental bureaucracy. Autists for Change isn’t just a nonprofit, it’s a movement, and we need it now more than ever. Even if these smiles can be brought to just a few faces, it will make all the difference.