Parents and carers: Support our Manifesto!

The Labour Party Autism / Neurodiversity Manifesto is a set of radical and practical policies which will significantly improve the lives of neurodivergent people and their families and carers. It was put together by a diverse team of neurodivergent people including many who are themselves parents of autistic and other neurodivergent children, some with very high needs.

If you are the parent or carer of an autistic or otherwise neurodivergent child, we are confident that you will welcome our policies. When Labour implements these policies, you will see:

an end to long waits for diagnosis;
SEND cuts stopped and reversed;
smaller class sizes;
training about neurodivergent conditions for all your child’s school staff;
accessible jobs for those who can work and adequate benefits for those who can’t;
action against harassment and hate crime;
supported accommodation and care facilities close to your home;
stronger laws against discrimination;
and much more.

We believe that these policies will be the beginning of the end of the daily struggles you face under Tory austerity, and a significant blow against the prejudice and ignorance around autism, ADHD, dyspraxia and neurodiversity generally.

We will also properly regulate ‘treatments’ and ‘cures’ for neurodivergent conditions. We know that conditions such as dyspraxia, autism and others can not be treated or cured, but there are therapies and interventions that can help children and adults to cope with the stresses that our society causes to them. But we also know that harmful and abusive ‘treatments’ are marketed by unscrupulous people in search of a quick buck, including bleach solution, chelation and even exorcism. Moreover, there are some more mainstream therapies that many autistic people consider to be abusive. Our answer to this is to investigate those concerns, to ban proven harmful ‘treatments’, and to regulate all interventions offered to neurodivergent people. Any investigation will of course hear testimony from all sides, including those who support the intervention, before making a decision. We are confident that you will support this part of our Manifesto as well.

The Manifesto will continue to develop under the auspices of Neurodivergent Labour, which is keen to work with all our allies, including parents and carers.

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6 comments

Kathy Bole 08/11/2019 11:41 am

I support the manifesto of NDLabour. This is important to allow Neurodiverse people to live active and fulfilling lives just like everyone else, whatever it means for them.

Janine Booth 13/11/2019 2:02 pm

Great – thanks!

Kelly Harrington 10/11/2019 6:37 pm

My Son has ADHD, Sensory processing disorder, Tourette’s syndrome and dispraxia aswell as many dyslexic traits. He turns 18 on Nov 30th and will be eligible to vote. He really struggled within school and because he wasn’t very understood was reluctant to accept help and make himself stand out so sadly left school with not enough qualifications. He is now finding it difficult to complete his college course. If there was such level of support a couple of yrs ago He might of found a little more success.I feel the education department under the Conservative party really failed him. I will show him your manifesto and see what he thinks about it. Thank you.

Janine Booth 13/11/2019 2:00 pm

Thank you. We look forward to hearing his views.

Sally 04/12/2019 11:48 am

This manifesto is very welcome and it seems a lot of good work has been done. Could I make a suggestion? When you have a heading “Parents and carers support our manifesto” then it looks like neurodivergent adults are not considered. Some neurodivergent people are adults and don’t have parents and carers to do things for them. Some ND adults are also parents or carers of ND children/relatives. Is it possible to amend the title to refect this? Many thanks.

Janine Booth 04/12/2019 2:31 pm

Thanks for you message!

ND Labour is run entirely by neurodivergent adults, many of us parents of neurodivergent children, so we definitely agree with you.

We have come under attack from a small number of people who accuse us of not caring about parents of neurodivergent (particularly autistic) kids, who falsely claim that our Manifesto does not address the needs of sverely disabled children, and that we were wrong to ‘exclude’ their parents. They have been lobbying Labour MPs to reject us and other policies.

We posted this particular article to clarify why we are an organisation of neurodivergent people and how our policies benefit all ND people and our families. We are appealing for parents and carers to unite with ND people to campaign for our rights and wellbeing, against the efforts of those who are trying to portray us as enemies.

This is just one article among many on this website. We don’t believe that one article addressing parents and carers detracts from the rest of the website’s contents being by, for and about neurodivergent people of all ages.