Minutes of the Fortieth
Post-Diagnostic Support Group
4th December 2019
Today’s group was attended by 37 people.
Unfortunately, thanks to the great British transport system, the speaker who was due to present to the group could not attend after her train was cancelled. Hopefully this talk can be arranged for another time.
Thankfully, Sarah and Linda came up with a back up plan! In the spirit of the festive season of goodwill, they decided to present together on the topic of empathy: which is a quality that some often assume that Autistic people lack.
The Myth of Empathy
However, Linda discussed how she does not believe that Neurotypical people have empathy (even though may people believe that they do!) and further discussed how actually, Autistic people can often be more empathic. This led to an interesting dialogue between Linda and Sarah, with many members of the group offering ideas and suggestions and asking questions.
The audio recording of the session is now available to listen to here. Any comments welcome.
During the break, there was the usual tea and coffee and, of course, the cakes! This month’s cakes were both gluten free: A Christmas Cake and Pear and Almond cake.
After the break, Linda and Sarah updated the group about current events here at Axia, including Calvin’s upcoming presentation at the National Autistic Society Professional’s Conference, which looks at presentations of Autism in the media. This then opened further discussions around the groups views on certain presentations in programmes such as ‘The A Word’.
Linda reminded everyone about the ‘Autism: Future Employment’ conference which is taking place on 31.01.2020 in Ty Pawb, Wrexham. The tickets are just £10 and can be purchased from Eventbrite.
Sue then explained the process of requesting books from the new Online Library which Dream has done a fantastic job of organising following Esme’s excellent effots of cataloguing and summarising the books in the Axia library.
Linda then closed the group.
The next group will be on Wednesday 15 January 2020 where we will be honoured to have Dr Luke Beardon as our guest speaker, presenting about his vision for ‘Autopia’.
INCLEMENT WEATHER
If there is a bad weather forecast within the region please check the Facebook page and Axia website to see if the group meeting is still on. If still in doubt please telephone 01244 567656 although the weather maybe reasonable in Crewe some of the staff live in North Wales and they may not be able to get there. We will do our best to update the website and Facebook page if the meeting is to be cancelled.
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