Ms Zarah Doyle:

I am the training manager with AsIAm but I am also here as CEO of SparkAbility, which is a grassroots autism support group. I support I want to comment on how joyful it can be to parents, autistic children and neurodivergent children and it is completely overshadowed by negativity and shame. To understand yourself is to understand your child as well. We struggle every day to knock down, climb over and sidestep barriers for our children to access their rights as children and as human beings just like Adam Harris, Amanda McGuinness and everyone here today has mentioned already.

You cannot advocate for your son, is something that I have heard before, because your son is autistic if you are not autistic. To that person, I would say that I have not had time to explore my own neurodivergent mind as a result of having to fight the barriers on a day-to-day basis and I am going through that process at the moment. It has taken me ten years to get to the stage where I can have the head space to explore those avenues of what it might mean for me as a person.

As parents, we understand and empathise on a level that no one else ever will. Unfortunately, when it comes to our lived experiences specifically, we are let down by the inconsistencies of the macro-system injustice on a daily basis. We are the parents who professionalise ourselves as nobody is coming to our aid, except, of course, for AsIAm and everyone here who is openly talking about all of the levels of stress that are out there and the barriers that we are fighting day to day.

When a parent experiences toxic stress because of failed social support systems, his or her ability to provide the support his or her child requires, or level of energy to fight that fight, may be encumbered. This can have a ripple effect and impact severely on the relationships within immediate family, extended family and the social circles within his or her community as well.

It should be noticed that a parent may also thrive in the face of adversity and challenge his or her situation creating his or her own support system. Sensory accessibility is why I set up a social enterprise for neurodivergent children creating safe space outside of the home or the home-away-from-home mentality.

We need to flip the narrative to a strength in social power that we can all get behind. Being afraid of difference is one of the biggest barriers to neurodiverse inclusive society.