So… Tell me about yourself… Matthew, Ontario Autism Advisory Panelist
I wrote an article for Medium introducing myself as a member of the Ontario Government’s Ontario Autism Program Advisory panel.
On May 30th, I was honoured to be selected as one of the self-advocate members on the Ontario Autism Program Advisory Panel. Our job over the next few months will be to review the feedback from the public consultations over the past few months in telephone town halls, MPP roundtables and the online survey. Out of that, the 20 of us will be providing recommendations to the Ministers of Children, Community & Social Services, Health and Education on how to provide needs based supports to autistic children in Ontario.
@MikeSchreiner Respectfully, do it if you can LEAD the party, but not if you can't. I met multiple OLP leadership candidates in 2019 and one thing that became clear is that the "leader" was a figurehead, which played a big role in their 2022 defeat. You need to be able to implement your vision.
I really hate that all the recommendations that I’m getting for any other side #disability I have are so useless for me with a #SpinalCordInjury with many food #allergies. Sigh. 1 out of every 10 recommendations I might be able to do. One condition causes another. Ugh #SCI
This may come as a shock, but for many, the hardest part about being #ActuallyAutistic isn’t the autism, it’s how people treat us because we’re #autistic.
Oh, this hits hard. I’ve experienced this as an #Autistic in the past until I was able to fully embrace my Autistic identity. I’ve seen this in my kids & many other Autistics. It’s why I push hard for #AutismAcceptance and changing the language we use about autism & disabilities
I just had a conversation with a 14-year-old #autistic kid in which they said "Masking is protecting yourself from others but it can't protect you from yourself. Bc all the negativity just gets turned inwards and you can't escape from that."
#AutisticMasking