Mr. Adam Harris:

The AsIAm youth leadership team, YLT, sits within our broader child and family support programme, which seeks to offer a suite of supports for both the child and the family by promoting well-being and self-understanding and creating social opportunities. Our YLT sits beside broader efforts to positively promote autistic self-identity in young people. Those efforts include our series of As We Are workshops for autistic teenagers and our As We Are resource for teenagers. The YLT is at the heart of everything AsIAm does, particularly on matters affecting children and young people. In the past three years, our YLT has had the opportunity to engage in training around self-advocacy skills, to represent the autism community at conferences and in the media and to meet a whole series of changemakers, from the Minister for disability to the Ombudsman for Children and this committee. The YLT has demonstrated an ability to safeguard the future of our organisation. Past members of the AsIAm YLT have gone on to become team members and board members of AsIAm and we have no doubt that our current YLT will be future leaders of our organisation.

On the question about what inclusion looks like, I will return to the name of the charity, AsIAm. For us, an inclusive education system and society for autistic young people are ones where our young people are equally valued and respected and have the same chances to live, participate and be valued for staying as they are. At the moment, there is a reality, especially in the world of education where autistic people have had the opportunity in large numbers to attend mainstream school, that there has been a reluctance to change the system to reflect that diversity. There is a sense that autistic people can be an afterthought in the environment. That came through clearly in our codes of behaviour research. For example, we saw autistic people being asked to conform to neurotypical norms around communication, regulation and sensory processing, which in many instances are unattainable or inappropriate standards for our community. We therefore need to get to much better place in that regard.

On the health system, 58% of our community noted that healthcare was not accessible to our community in the Same Chance Report 2024. Mandatory training is needed. When families or autistic adults engage with health services, there is a presumption of training that is often not a reality. Linked to that, we need to see an approach where there is no wrong door. Too often we see scenarios where people who have an autism diagnosis are misdiagnosed or excluded from mainstream health services.