Welcome to the PDA Society’s uPDAte newsletter – 15th May 2018
Today is PDA Action Day 2018!
Positive PDA
Our theme for today is Positive PDA. Most of what is written about PDA focuses on the challenges and difficulties of living and working with this complex profile of autism. Whilst this is of course the daily reality for many people, it’s also important to remember the positives, even if the ‘breaks in the clouds’ are only infrequent. We’ve created some new resources on our website on the Positive PDA theme – read more here
Also do look out for lots of posts today on social media using the hashtag #PDAday, #PositivePDA and #MyPDAJourney from the PDA Society and the increasing number of others posting regularly about PDA. And do please share with us what you’re doing to mark the day too.
Being Misunderstood – survey report
Today we have published a report entitled Being Misunderstood which captures the results of our survey of nearly 1500 PDAers, parents/carers, partners and professionals. The survey is the largest on the topic to date and shows how autistic people with a PDA profile are at especially high risk of being misunderstood. Read the report here.
The PDA Society is calling for local authorities to adopt a position statement about PDA, and for professionals to ensure that ‘needs-based and outcomes-focused’ becomes the norm for this group and not the exception as it is now. Find out more about this here.
There is a peaceful protest taking place in London today, organised by the campaign team behind the recent PDA petition, which will help to draw more attention to the call to action.
How you can take positive action
If all this inspires you to want to take some positive action yourself in relation to PDA, we’ve developed some resources to help you to encourage your local authority to recognise the PDA profile of autism. Learn more here.
Conference
Our recent conference in Birmingham, on the theme ‘Our PDA Journey’, was very well received. Summaries of the plenary speakers are available here and a video compilation of the conference activity, where delegates were asked what advice they would have given to themselves at the start of their PDA journey, is here.
PDA Society merchandise
At the conference we launched a small range of PDA Society merchandise – including awareness/alert cards, pin badges, window stickers and panda tshirts – which can be purchased from our online store here.
PDA training
For details of PDA training run by the PDA Society – including our workshops in Cardiff (19th May) and Bristol (22nd June) and our 6 week course in High Wycombe (starting 17th May) – and others please click here.
Keeping in touch
In a few days’ time if you’re registered on our site you’ll receive an email from us asking whether you wish to continue to receive news and information from the PDA Society – this is so that we can be compliant with the new data protection regulations – you will have to respond if you’d like to stay on our mailing list so please look out for it and sign up if you’d like to keep in touch.
Thank you for your interest and support.
Wishing everyone a very positive PDA Action Day 2018.
The PDA Society
