Why do I need Maths? Guest Post at Employment Autism

Citizen Odai Quaye has published another guest post at Employment Autism, looking at the requirement of many British employers to have a maths qualification for most roles.

I’ve done all that is requested in order to show that I have a life outside of education: I have work and volunteering experience. I have undertaken a work programme through the NAS and completed an online course in understanding autism and reached out to other services. These days it feels like they benefit me only in the sense that if somebody asks me “have you tried ‘x’ ” I can say “I’ve done that”, which doesn’t amount to much.

You know what Adele, Simon Cowell and Richard Branson all have in common? None of them have a maths qualification – one’s a world conquering singer, one’s a respected record executive and TV personality, the other is one half of the duo that founded the Virgin Group. I only feel uneasy about the last example because businesspeople like to downplay how they became successful and make it seem as if they made it without any help, which is far from the truth.

Read more at Employment Autism: https://employmentautism.org.uk/why-do-i-need-maths/

Radio Harrow Interview with Sarah

In December 2023, Sarah gave an interview to Harrow Community Radio about the Autistic Empire and her professional work as a mental health occupational therapist. We have made it available as an episode of our podcast, Audible Autism. A full transcript is available below.

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/audible-autism/episodes/Radio-Harrow-with-Sarah-e2tsrrn

If you would like to be on an episode of Audible Autism, please fill out our form here, and we’d love to chat with you.

Transcript for episode:

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Cast down your bucket: Guest Post on Employment Autism

Citizen Odai Quaye has been published speaking on his experiences being black, autistic and unemployed as a guest post on Employment Autism. This article builds on Odai’s earlier talk he gave in October 2023.

Even in this barren desert of disappointment, I’ve managed to find an oasis or two of positive things to talk about. Perhaps the most important of them being the process of learning that I don’t need to fit into anything and to embrace the grey area I fall in – the grey area that is of being a Black British (African Caribbean) person with more than one invisible mental condition and also not having a public social niche (goths, punks, ravers etc) of my own as well. The chagrin from those attempts at integration is what led to me distancing myself from others, more as a benefit to prevent me getting more bitter, and affecting relationships, but also even though it led to me being more isolated – as an only child I had already learned to appreciate my own company.

There’s real strength from that, but it doesn’t get talked about a lot, so I try to advocate to others who find that they can’t integrate or totally separate themselves. I’ve finally managed to obtain something resembling a safety network – it’s not fully formed but compared to what I had in the past it is a large improvement and I’m deeply grateful for all the people involved who’ve been in my corner so I can at least feel to some degree that I don’t have to carry everything by myself any more.

Read more at Employment Autism: https://employmentautism.org.uk/cast-down-your-bucket/

National Autistic Society’s Mental Health Professional’s Conference

This is a talk that Sarah McCulloch gave to the National Autistic Society’s Mental Health Professional’s Conference in 2022.

From Sarah: “I gave this talk from my perspective as an NHS professional but posting it to the Empire YouTube for reference. Unfortunately, this was during the pandemic and I discovered when my talk started, the webinar platform didn’t show me anyone else and I was giving the talk to myself in an empty room, which I do not respond well to, became nervous and “ummed” a lot. I do not blame them for not inviting me back! I couldn’t publish it as was because it was very pronounced so I’ve spent 18 months trying to get it edited to remove this, which has been successful but the level of edit required means that the video jumps a lot, it’s not you.”

Black History Month 2024

Here’s a surprise 2nd episode and it’s our Black history month episode for this year

Odai speaks with special guest Black Infinite member Sarah Abdullahi touch on subjects like: Race and autism, ,Alienation within ones own community(and how autism is discussed) & why we take pride to be on the spectrum.

I think many will find this a revealing and interesting episode especially in terms of perspectives and angles they might not have considered before, but that’s what makes Audible Autism special.

Audible Autism Episode 36 – A peek behind the neurodiverse curtain

This is our first episode or rather a minisode in quite a long time and within this one you will be getting a peek behind the curtain learning about our editor Simon whose responsible for putting these episodes together.

Astute observations in terms of sound, being the parent of an Autistic son and also what he’s learned over the years from him.

Expect another good episode and thank you for still following us through thick and thin.

Tower Hamlets Autism Wednesdays – September 2024

Sarah will be speaking about the Empire and the work that we do at the Tower Hamlets Autism Service’s Wednesday social group.

This group is run by THAS and is for anyone who has been diagnosed with autism by THAS.
THAW runs monthly on a Wednesday from 17:30 until 19:00 – alternating online and face-to-face in a cafe in Mile End.

You can learn more about Tower Hamlets Autism Service here: https://www.elft.nhs.uk/services/adult-autism-service-tower-hamlets

Specific Strategies for Neurodivergent Caregiving – StarSPD Conference 2024

“It is now a fairly common experience for many autistic adults to receive their diagnosis after taking their children on a diagnostic journey. But what about the undiagnosed autistic adults caring for autistic relatives who have not realized the parallels? Sarah McCulloch, an autistic adult, activist and mental health occupational therapist, will outline some of her experiences and challenges working with this population and offer some strategies for autistic people and professionals aiming to work with families holistically.”

More information:

https://sensoryhealth.org/basic/virtual-summit-supporting-caregivers-and-families-their-sensory-health-journey

The Shop has now relaunched

After several years of drift, we have now shifted our online shop from Shopify to Woocommerce and this is now available online.

We have now removed many of the products we used to have such weighted blankets and sensory toys as the market has now shifted and these are much easier to obtain for a reasonable cost from Amazon. When we started these were considered specialist products you had to pay as high prices from specialist disability platforms, but the mainstreaming of neurodiversity means this is no longer case and other companies can now operate at scale.

We currently have five t-shirt designs available and because we have set up a dropshipping feature, it is very easy to create new designs, if you have any particular requests please email us at team at autisticempire.com.

We continue to try to get our shop mirrored to Amazon but this is actually incredibly not straight forward and so it continues to be an ongoing concern.