As the lockdown continues many families who share a home with a person with a disability are no longer receiving respite services. This is causing all kinds of grief. James Piercey reports.
2020 will be the year that the provincial department of education will see its inclusion policies challenged in practice by the pandemic. Parents fear that it will not pass the test. Brooklyn Connolly reports.
Alex Kronstein tackles what inclusive education should look like for autistic people. “By meaningfully engaging those who are under-represented and marginalized, it will be much easier to achieve full inclusion.”
“The current government adopted the Roadmap Report and a 10-year time frame for significantly increasing community-based supported living options while decreasing reliance on large institutions. So far, however, the allocation of resources from government needed to create community capacity has been woefully inadequate. Wait lists for services continue to grow – from 1100 in 2015 to 1300 in 2017 to nearly 1500 last year. This is because the badly needed investments by government have not been forthcoming.”
Alex Kronstein continues to explore an Autism NS report, specifically the section about autistics wandering off. Here he tackles police interventions involving autistic people in general, and specifically racialized people. Alex also suggests some safety issues that aren’t getting the attention that they deserve.
There is always a reason why a neurodivergent person is a so called flight risk, and wanders off. That obvious observation is too easily lost when solutions such as tracking devices become the focus, writes Alex Kronstein.
Any public policy discussion regarding autism is dominated by non-autistic people, be they parents or major autism organizations such as Autism Nova Scotia. This is very much by design, and further reinforced by media coverage, writes Alex Kronstein.
Alex Kronstein on the #AgentofChangeNS campaign by Autism Nova Scotia. Although well intended, it does not go far enough, he suggests. In order to be a real “agent of change”, he lists many other things that radical activist autistics would recommend as well.
Frequent contributor Alex Kronstein on autism awareness vs autism acceptance. “Many autistic people, myself included, find the traditional “awareness” campaigns to be insufficient and harmful, because the effect of autism “awareness” is that is ends up promoting fear and stigma against us, and encourages non-autistic people to think about ways they can make us more “normal” or pass as non-autistic.”