Neuroaffirming Wednesday Webinar (Joint) 02.04.2025 - 30.04.2025

Parents, care providers, and service users in the autistic care and support space are increasingly interested in “neurodivergent-friendly”, “neurodiversity-informed”, or “neuro-affirming” care. 
But what does this mean? 
What does neuro-affirming care and support look like? 
And how do we integrate the principles of neurodiversity with providing supports or interventions for autistic people?

In this talk, we’ll cover 
1) What the neurodiversity paradigm is, 
2) Why it’s so important to consider neurodiversity in the context of providing care and support to autistic (and, more broadly, all neurodivergent) people, 
3) What neuro-affirming care and support provision actually means, and what it looks like.

When we hear about neurodiversity, or about neuro-affirming support, it’s often in the context of autistic people with lower support needs. These are autistic people who may need some support, often related accessing education or employment, but who are generally capable of self-advocating – of understanding their own needs and asking for help with them. However, this group of autistic people is only part of the autistic population. 
Some autistic people, those with higher support needs, may not be able to do these things. What does neuro-affirming care and support look like for these people, in this context?
Building on last week’s talk, we’ll be discussing neuro-affirming practice again, but for autistic people with high support needs this time. 

We’ll cover 
1.    Why neuro-affirming support is still important for this group of autistic people, 
2.    How some of our basic principles of neuro-affirming support might need to be altered for this specific context, and 
3.    Some tips and hints as to how you can start applying neuro-affirming principles in your work with autistic people with high support needs.

This webinar, “Neuroaffirmative Practice and What This Means, When Considering Mental Health and Wellbeing,” will begin by briefly covering what neuroaffirming practice actually is and how we can all make changes in our practices to make the leap forward.

We will discuss how this relates to mental health and well-being, and the enormous and vital benefits that it can bring for neurodivergent people.

Topics will include masking and its links to poor mental health, quality of life and how quality of life measures, and other mental health measures, need to be re-examined through a neurodivergent lens of a what good life actually entails, the many barriers to mental health care for neurodivergent people and how we can start to address these.