Gooding – Written evidence (YPD0005)

I am autistic. Like the vast majority of autistic people, I am unwaged. I would like to raise my concern that efforts to "transition" some disabled/neuroatypical people from education to employment may be coercive and harmful. Talk about "barriers" to employment implies that employment is inherently a good thing for people. It may not be for everyone. Sufficient disability benefits or a sufficient basic universal income could be a better approach. "Removing barriers" can all too often be a euphemism for "somehow making money out of a group we're currently not making enough money out of". Disabled people have a right to exist, even if they don't make other people money, and even of they cost people money. Our right to exist transcends economics.

It can be difficult or impossible for policymakers to understand what it is really like for any individual disabled/neuroatypical person to be who they are. A genuine enquiry into this would be welcomed, but I am (I think understandably) wary of how any information will be interpreted and used. I wonder if there are foregone conclusions and goals which might be shifted if information were sought more openmindedly. What would actually be good for us and what would actually be good for society, beyond pre-established economic imperatives?

Personally, I have a Masters degree. I'd love to do a PhD, but I can't, because if I had a loan to do that I'd have to give up my Universal Credit, and wouldn't be able to pay my rent. This is exclusionary, because the vast majority of autistic people are unwaged, so it means that the vast majority of autistic people are excluded from PhD loans. Many of us would be superlative PhD students. The last time I applied for funding through a university there was one place in the whole humanities department. PhD loans need to be open to everyone. This is a peripheral issue, but one I've had personal experience with, so I'm including it.

As a society, we are facing ecological and employment challenges that point towards reducing working weeks and steering away from production/"growth" for its own sake and towards better indicators of success as a society. I think the discourse surrounding disability employment could do with catching up with these developing ideals.

I could do so much more in the world with more resources and a less punitive system. The vast majority of autistic people are unwaged. Autistic people are encouraged to develop our social lives, yet denied sufficient funds to engage in normal social activities. If we have partners we can't live with them or we lose our benefits and become financially dependent on them (laying us open to being vulnerable to domestic violence and not having the funds to leave, which I've experienced myself in the past). We can either live alone or have our financial independence taken away.

We need more funds and less coercion. We need to be able to live our lives in ways which work for us without being subject to a sort of economic siege warfare.

That's how I, an unwaged autistic person in their 30s, see it. My advice would be, zoom out and see it with more perspective, and really listen.

7 August 2023