By Charlene Tait

BY now we are all too familiar with the fear and anxiety the pandemic has caused. Alongside the challenges that life typically throws at us, we have had to adapt to new way of living, working and socialising.

As an organisation that supports autistic people and their families, Scottish Autism quickly recognised that, not only would our usual ways of reaching out to people need to change, we would need to think differently about what support we could offer.

In many ways the need for information was relatively easy to meet once we had interpreted and translated the guidance into accessible resource. However with the country in lockdown we recognised that the social aspects of life which, for many autistic people, were already fragile, were set to crumble.

This is when some of the failures in our system came home to roost. In social care, we have seen a trend towards crisis-led services. Eligibility criteria for some services have become so loaded towards crisis, it is almost as if we have, in some perverse way, incentivised it.

So, what is the answer? I believe it’s pro-active, preventative services that are in the right place and available at the right time for people. That may sound naive or simplistic but we spend eye-watering amounts of money on crisis services, that’s before we even consider the human cost to mental health and wellbeing, to families and to our society as a whole.

Information, websites and apps are all well and good and have their place, but, people need people. It’s as simple and as complicated as that. It was that principle that gave birth to Affinity, an online service that provides coaching, counselling and supported decision-making for autistic people and their families.

The concept is straightforward. We identify a diverse and talented group of professionals who understand autism and autistic people and match them with autistic people who need short-term, targeted, goal-directed support. Provide that service “just in time” and we have a chance of empowering and enabling people rather than driving them into hopelessness and crisis.

It’s thanks to crucial funding from the ScottishPower Foundation that we are able to develop and provide such a vital service despite the financial challenges the charity industry as a whole has faced over recent months.

It is early days but we have emerging evidence that Affinity is working and in a way that puts autistic people in control, in a way that sustains and develops people rather than diminishes and exhausts them as navigating the services on offer so often can.

There has been a lot of talk that post-pandemic we should build back better. Top of my list would be a return to compassionate and timely supports for people when they need it rather than leave them to navigate the system, battle with the gate keepers and be led to a place of crisis by the very services they turned to for help.

Charlene Tait is Deputy CEO at Scottish Autism