What Can Social Work Teach Autistic People?

By Tobi McEvenue

My personal and familial connection to autism, and my professional complicity in the autism discourse, has ignited my passion to explore counter-narratives about autism. My encounters with the professional lexicon used to identify autistic individuals took place in social work spaces, a vocabulary called person-first language, which instructs society that"...disability should be spoken of as something that comes along 'with' people... [and] conceives of disability as a troublesome condition arbitrarily attached to some people, a condition (unlike gender, race or ethnicity) that is only significant as a remedial or managerial issue" (Titchkosky, 2001, p. 126). According to person-first language, disability, or autism is at once something which afflicts individuals, and is not understood as a part of identity. While formerly working in a social work capacity at an agency funded to provide services to autistic people and their families, my first education was the political importance of "person-first" naming .I was taught to refer to service users as "people living with ASD", and not as "autistic people".

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1805241737
• ISBN13: 9781805241737
• Release Date: February 2023
• Publisher: Mohsinmuzaffar
• Length: 92 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"