Gerraint’s blog March 2021

It was Autism Awareness week at the end of March/beginning of April and with the help of Sam Williams, the Engage to Change Communications Officer, I made a video about my experiences of my autism diagnosis and my employment journey to the role of Lead Ambassador for the Engage to Change project. You can watch the video on our You Tube channel.

George and Michael, two of our project ambassadors, spoke about Engage to Change at the Blaenau Gwent People First’s Annual Conference on 16 March.

On the 24 March, I co-chaired an employment event on Microsoft Teams with Elsa, another one of our ambassadors. The event – “The way forward – providing employment for people with learning a disability and autism” – was facilitated by the Engage to Change lead partner Learning Disability Wales and included evidence from our research partners at Cardiff University. The event outlined what Engage to Change believes needs to happen in Wales to enable more people with a learning disability or autism to find and keep paid work. It also promoted the employment of people with autism and/or learning disabilities.

Later this week I’m presenting at an Employment Network at Blaenau Gwent – aimed at HR professionals to encourage them to support the employment of people with autism and/or learning disabilities. I’ll report back next month.

The Fun Hour is ongoing and I’m also doing the regular Coronavirus updates that are uploaded to You Tube, Facebook, Twitter and the Insight app.  We also held a refresher training session for the ambassadors at the beginning of March, to refresh their knowledge of presentations to promote the project.