I felt compelled to respond to the latest Conservative punch-down: Kemi Badenoch’s endorsement of dangerously false claims on the administrative load of neurodivergence (What kind of person would drag autistic children into the culture wars? The Kemi Badenoch kind, 14 October). As a parent of two autistic boys without a formal diagnosis – the eldest already two years into the waiting list, with the youngster’s referral somewhere in the ether – I’m absolutely livid. To see your loved ones struggle without the support they need to keep them safe and well is hard enough, before they’re dragged into Tory point-scoring against “woke” society.
On a professional level, I’m even more affronted by these accusations of workplace meddling and entitlement by people with neurodevelopmental differences. I’m part of a research group exploring autistic health inequalities, and I can assure readers that there is ample evidence that every factor that equates to poor health outcomes is more prevalent in the autistic community. This can and should change, with better knowledge and autism-informed approaches to health and social care.
As a party so apparently keen to see people in employment, the Tories should be endorsing support for neurodivergent people in work, not making the workplace more hostile to the 70% of autistic people who are unemployed. I suppose finding answers to these problems is not the intention of such polemical publications. We can only hope there can be deep institutional changes for better integration in the coming years that cannot be unpicked by a future rightwing government.
Dr Erin Beeston
Urmston, Greater Manchester
• I have two sons with a diagnosis of autism. My eight-year-old is top of his class in every subject in a mainstream classroom, with no additional funding or accommodations, apart from a chair cushion that allows him to move around more than his peers. I have no doubt that he will achieve academically, but he may need future employers to understand that his brilliance comes with a directness and intensity that may not do him any favours in climbing the career ladder. An understanding of that will remove a disadvantage, not create an advantage, and has nothing to do with his personal “resilience”.
My five-year-old is non-speaking and has far greater support needs. He had more than 200 words at the age of two and lost all of these in what is known as a regression. He has just started at a specialist school. He does not receive transport. How anyone can think his position as a non-speaking individual with lifelong care needs offers him any sort of “economic advantages and protections” is beyond me. I am shocked and devastated at the wilful ignorance displayed by politicians who are diverting the blame for a lack of investment and funding on to the different and the vulnerable.
Name and address supplied
• As a 62-year-old who finally had an autism diagnosis at 58 (self-financed as it was a five-year wait on the Conservative-funded NHS), I can say it is a personal revelation. I have Asperger’s. I have worked my whole adult life, had a family and a successful career. Over the years, my struggles with anxiety, depression and at times a very personal fear of my own insanity made parts of my life near intolerable. The diagnosis has begun to allow me to come to terms with those feelings by giving me an understanding of my “difference” from mainstream society and how to navigate that.
If I had known this about myself at an earlier stage in my life, it would have made a huge difference to me and to those around me. Any suggestion that an autism diagnosis is some kind of attempt to gain a free ride is utter nonsense. For me it is a joy to see that young people now have the chance to be diagnosed early and given a better chance to find their place in society.
Stuart Bruce
Box, Wiltshire
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