A pair of recent events held in October provided important opportunities for connection among the Yarra Ranges autistic community.
Healesville-based author Sandra Thom-Jones, with support of grants from Yarra Ranges Council, was behind the second edition of Auti-magination, a published series of stories by local autistic writers, and Autism and Ageing, a discussion with older autistic people for the council’s Over 50s Festival.
Ms Thom-Jones said last year’s Auti-magination was lots of fun, very successful and a wonderful experience so they applied for grants to do it again.
“The focus of the workshop was really around exploring creativity, exploring writing as a medium, because many autistic people are very creative, and there’s a lot of myths around autism and the sort of misperception that autistic people are not very creative,” she said.
“The reality of it is that many autistic people have amazing imaginations and are incredibly creative, but often struggle in the very structured system that we face in schools.
“Last year a lot of people had said to us ‘I’m autistic and I’m very creative, but writing’s not really my medium’ so this year, we also included an art competition, where we invited autistic people of all ages living in the Yarra Ranges to submit a piece of artwork and we had that judged by artists with prize categories for primary school age, secondary school age and adult.”
Artists had their works on display in the Yarra Ranges Council Civic Centre for the week following the book launch event on 9 October.
Ms Thom-Jones said it was marvellous listening to people talk about how important and valuable it was seeing their work up on the wall.
“It was the same with the book, it was the first time people have had their work published and shared with the world,” she said.
“The stories in the book are amazing and the artworks are incredible and it was just such a great experience just to see how talented these groups of people are, and to be able to actually share that with the Yarra Ranges community.
“It’s not novel for many autistic people to actually be comfortable and be welcome in public spaces and I think that was really nice for the participants to be able to come in the council building, be welcomed by the councillors, to feel part of the local community…valuing the role that we have to play in the community, I think that’s really huge.”
Four workshops were held for Auti-magination at the Lilydale Community House on Saturdays between March and June this year.
Ms Thom-Jones said Autism and Ageing is also something she’s really passionate about.
“One of the big misperceptions about autism is people who when they think ofautism, they think of children, there’s a real lack of awareness and understanding of autism as a life-long condition,” she said.
“You’re born autistic, you stay autistic your whole life, you die autistic, and there’s a real lack of awareness of that in the community, in the health sector and in the service sector, which means that as people become older they face really serious challenges.”
“If you’re an older autistic person and you’re looking at interacting with the medical system, you’re looking at going into aged care, there’s all those concerns about are people actually going to understand my needs, are they going to understand the way that I communicate, am I going to be able to find comfortable safe spaces where I can be me and I can access the supports, the resources and the environment that I need to survive, feel safe and feel comfortable.”
Autism and Ageing was held on 13 October, also at the Yarra Ranges Council Civic Centre.
Ms Thom-Jones said one common topic was the awareness of sensory issues, which people are very aware of with children and less aware of with adults, like bright lights, loud noises or other things that are really challenging for autistic people of all ages.
“When we look at the services that are provided for adults when they are provided, they rely on a lot of neurotypical assumptions, that everyone’s going to like very active social events with bright lights and we’re all in here in this room doing everything together… that’s not necessarily what safe comfortable socialisation or safe comfortable aged care looks like for autistic people,” she said.
“The other thing that was a big topic of discussion, was around how isolated older autistic people can become… autistic people tend to become very isolated, they don’t feel welcome and included in the community, so we do have a lot of older autistic people who are very separate from the community.
“They don’t have the social networks, they don’t have access to a lot of the supports and resources they need, they don’t have access to adequate medical care because of challenges with communicating with doctors…we just don’t have the supports and the resources set up for older autistic people.”
Ms Thom-Jones has been diagnosed with autism and has won two Scarlett Stilletto awards, ‘a national award for short stories, written by Australian women and featuring a strong female protagonist.’
