- Manar Matusiak (Living Autism) reminded us that the Living Autism online winter conference’Autism and Festivities‘ is tomorrow (Thursday 10th Dec 12-3pm). Everyone is welcome to join but would need to register by 10pm on Wednesday 9th December. Everyone who registers will get a recording of the event to watch later. Registration details are here: http://autismconference.co.uk/
- Jonathan/Sue shared a research invite. Georgia Brooke-Hudson is a Counselling Psychology doctoral student who has collected research data from adults with autism who live in supported living. She is now keen to find out about the experiences of those who live in their family home and how these experiences relate to wellbeing and independence. She would like people with autism and parents/carers to be involved. Information about this research is attached to this email. Anyone who is interested in taking part or would like to find out more can contact Georgia directly – georgia.brooke-hud@yorksj.ac.uk. Please forward to anyone who may be willing to participate.
- Sue introduced Beth Eastwood who is an MSc Occupational Therapy student. Beth is keen to do her research around autistic adults and employment. She has yet to have ethical approval but was looking for suggestions for who might be willing to cascade her research invite (she will be hoping to talk to autistic adults who live at home and are unemployed or underemployed and also parents). Tracy Wray from CYC agreed that an invite could be cascaded to the social work team by Tracey or Rachael Thistlewood, and Maureen agreed an invite could be cascaded to parents from the York carers group.
- Tracey asked about whether there was any research around the impact of COVID, as she is working with someone who is struggling. We talked about Connor Davidsons study which was presented at the last meeting and his slides are attached to this email. Other suggestions were that MIND in York are offering sessions around COVID and Autistica have developed some online resources which can be found here: https://www.autistica.org.uk/what-is-autism/coronavirus
- We agreed the next meeting would be Wednesday 10th March from 10.30-12.30 and we would do this again online. It’s the presentation will be about autism and parenting – details and an invite will follow nearer to the time. Maureen and Andrew suggested another topic for next year to be Epilepsy, which we will explore.