Ms Amy O'Keefe:

On whether autistic people not being listened to, I stated earlier that many of us involved in or working in behaviour analysis have had elective behavioural therapy and acceptance and commitment training in order to help ourselves. However we cannot speak positively about our experiences because we are not looked at favourably. Dr. Mulhern and I were mentioned in the announcement relating to the division of behaviour analysis and the autism special interest group, and the PSI retweeted the information. We got death threats from people on Twitter. I was called a disgrace to autistic people and a traitor to my neuro type. I was threatened with bodily harm because of a misconception of what the science is in Ireland and of the fact that sciences evolve. In medicine, for example, the contraceptive pill and reproductive interventions were carried out as experiments on women of colour in America, but we still use the contraceptive pill. Codes of ethics change. Sciences evolve. Behaviour analysis is no different. We are continually learning more and more.

I am constantly learning more about my own brain. We are constantly learning more. The more input and knowledge we have, the more the science evolves. We now know that using hand-over-hand prompting with a child who does not want to do it is not ethical. We know it is not necessary to make someone look at us and sit still just to listen. We do not need to force a child who does not really want to make friends to learn social skills that will allow them to interact with people with whom they do not want to interact. The science has changed.

There are some very unethical practices, focused in the US because it is under a medical model. It is the only thing people can be funded for and the insurance companies set the targets and goals. In the US, there is a culture whereby if goals are not set, there will not be funding. What are the goals and what do they need to look like? The insurance companies need to see progress, and progress for them relates to whether the child or person behaves like a neurotypical person. We do not have those standards in Ireland. In Ireland, we have always strived to create environments for our clients and pupils to access. If a child does not want to make friends at a given time, I am not going to force them to learn how to share and turn-take if they are happy playing by themselves. A year later, they might decide they really like, say, LEGO group and want to go, so I will help them learn how to communicate with their peers in a community of their choosing.

I am getting quite passionate and emotional about this, but it is an emotive subject for me. Our culture is very different and autistic voices are being listened to by the majority of us, but when I question people or try to engage them on what their understanding of behaviour analysis is, it is very much based on someone having read something on a blog from the US. There are advocates who are vocally against systemic ABA in the US, such as Terra Vance, who runs NeuroClastic. She has a boycott-ABA approach in the US, but she also recognises that outside the US there is a very different culture. She has stated that behaviour analysts seem to be the only people being held to account, but also that they are the only people who are listening.

As Senator Seery Kearney said, it is a systemic matter, but our systems are very different from those in the US. Ours have always been person centred and values based. It is a completely different experience the US. They still focus on these normative issues because meeting these goals is how they keep funding for their clients, but we do not have that issue here. That is why I opened my presentation at the division of behaviour analysis conference by saying we have an unprecedented opportunity to make systemic change in Ireland because we are restricted by the same expectations as in the US.