Autism Awareness at Kemble Care in Hereford

25 Sep 2015

Last week Kemble Care hosted an autism awareness event that we had organised. The speaker was Judith North from Orenda Training and Consultancy in Weston Super Mare. Three members of our team attended, together with several staff members from Kemble Care.

Judith is a joy to listen to. She is passionate about understanding autism as a processing difference, not a disability or a deficit. The central idea in her presentation was that we need to understand our own default systems for processing sensory input before we can provide effective support for someone on the autistic spectrum. To illustrate this concept, she drew on the work of a number of people living with Autistic Spectrum Conditions, including Dr Temple Grandin – the eminent scientist and prolific author. Judith noted that autism is increasingly a political matter as more and more people insist on living in a way that makes sense to them. This is a significant departure from the standard teaching on autism which creates a distance between people with lived experience of autism and neurotypical people.

Having worked in social care since 1986, Judith has a wealth of experience with people on the autistic spectrum. She is the author of Better Services for People with Autistic Spectrum Conditions (Department of Health, 2006). She recently set up Orenda Training and Consultancy, inspired by Margaret Mead's belief that "a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world...it's the only thing that ever did."

We're convinced that more people need to hear Judith talk about autism from the inside. We look forward to welcoming her back to this part of the country before too long.