Tom Wiles is a freelance drummer who is using support from Life Choices to develop his business and social media skills. Tom talks about what having autism means to him. Read more
One of the ongoing challenges that we face in bemix is how we describe the groups of people we are set up to "benefit". Not-for-profit organisations are generally set up with beneficiaries who are "in need" and others who "help" or "support" them. An unnecessary power imbalance we are working to change.
Our work clearly has a hugely positive impact on the people involved, but the people who are involved are not just people with learning difficulties and/or autism, they are are workforce, families and friends, schools, employers, customers, the local environment, the wider local community, people in hospitals, students.... we are people, bringing together our human skills and qualities to make the world a more inclusive and equal place to live. When we work together and share resources, experiences and skills, we all benefit. We call this co-production.
But that is a bit of a long-winded way to communicate the heart of what we do. So we have to find a way to define the purpose of the organisation and the people our work is most focused on. Naturally, people have different experiences of language and different preferences. Read more about the language we use by clicking here.
In this blog, we focus on the language we use to describe autism and what that means to autistic people.