Q1 – What is your job and how do you interact with autistic people through your job?

• Educational Psychologist
• Supporting children and young people from the ages of 0-18 who are struggling to access a school curriculum for any reason.
• A large proportion of children and young people on my caseload have Autism.
• My role is to assess the special educational needs of these children and make recommendations to teachers, staff and parents to help them more fully access the curriculum.
• If children need more specialist provisions e.g. classroom assistance or specialist placement, she facilitates this.
• Also delivers training on ASD to parents, colleagues, school staff, and day care providers.
• Typically interacts with children and young people with autism at least once a week.  On occasions, has carried out intervention programmes with individuals.

Q2 – What challenges do you see autistic people face?

• This is a difficult question to answer
• Each person with ASD is unique and faces a different set of challenges.
• The autistic spectrum is very wide and you can encounter individuals who are very highly functioning, or individuals with severe learning difficulties who are reliant on others for all aspects of their care.
• All people with ASD have deficits in the following areas:
  • Social interaction
    • Typically more difficult to interact in social situations.
    • Typically have a lower tolerance for mixing with others in a social capacity.
    • Difficulty understanding social norms, facial expressions, or social cues that others can pick up on automatically.
    • Social interaction can be very confusing and uncomfortable.
    • Mixing with new people can be especially challenging.
  • Social communication
    • Have difficulty to a certain degree when using their language skills to communicate in social settings.
    • May say things which are inappropriate and can appear rude, cheeky, or hurtful to others.
    • Often take language literally and find it difficult to understand sarcasm, idioms, or ‘banter’.
  • Rigid thinking
    • World is often a confusing place for people with autism
    • Thrive on structure and routine.
    • Often like to know exactly what is happening and cannot cope with unexpected changes.
    • Often also find any transition difficult e.g. moving from one activity to the other.
    • Fixed ideas in their heads about how they think things should be and can often get frustrated, cross or upset if this does not work out as they had planned.
    • Perfectionist tendencies.
    • Typically like to operate according their own agenda and find it difficult to appreciate others viewpoints or compromise.
    • Can be viewed as arrogant or uncooperative.
    • Rigid thinking patterns lead to self-imposed routines that they like to follow e.g. sitting in the same seat, or only eating out of a blue cereal bowl.
    • Also tend to have fixed areas of interest e.g. for younger children this is often dinosaurs, vehicles, computer games or particular cartoons on television. As children get older their interests may change but are still restricted.
    • Often a person with ASD has interests which are all consuming.
    • Difficult for them in social situations as they struggle to talk about anything else.
  • Sensory processing
    • Big issue for many people with autism.
    • Typically the way people with autism process sensory stimuli is different to others and can be very challenging for them.
    • Seek out stimulation e.g. they like deep pressure, visually inspecting objects, or engaging in some repetitive behaviours like hand flapping or spinning.
    • Frequently overwhelmed by other sensory stimuli e.g. noises, smells, the feeling of certain fabrics or clothing against their skin, and certain foods.
    • Many people with autism have a very restricted diet.
• When you take these four areas the world can be challenging for people with ASD.
• Example of going to get hair cut
  • you may have to go to a salon that you have never go to and you don’t know exactly what is going to happen so you get anxious because you don’t know the routine and what is expected of you.
  • You have difficulty picking up the social cues by watching other customers around you when it is your turn, you still don’t know what to do.
  • When you are getting your hair cut, you are expected to make small talk with a stranger.  You may be overwhelmed by the bright lights, the noise of the clippers, the feel of someone pulling at your hair, and the annoying tickle of the hairs on your skin when they have been cut.
  • Then when you go to pay, to you tip or not tip, or what happens if their card machine isn’t working and you don’t have any cash?
• As a result of the challenges they face people with autism often suffer from anxiety and other mental health difficulties.
• Currently has a significant number of young people with autism on my caseload who are too anxious to attend school.

Q3 – What impact would you say technology has on Autistic people’s lives?

• I have found that technology has a huge impact on the lives of people with autism
• Aids communication as they can text or chat to people online without worrying about interpreting other social cues that they would have to if they were meeting face to face