A few weeks ago, I met a senior Nurse. We were talking about a young autistic man in an ATU. I'd met the young man. I explained it was a mystery why staff in that ATU were afraid of them & that I'd have no difficulties being with them. The nurse thought I was overconfident/

Nope.
There's some people I won't be with.
There's some I know won't be a problem.
It's about autistic communication & trust.
And it's about 5 decades of being autistic, & 4 decades of caring for family members who enter meltdown/

Combined with two decades of working with all sorts of autistic people, in all sorts of settings including seclusion.
Now, reading non-autistic people is much much harder. I can't guarantee what they'll do, at all. It could be anything, and frequently is indeed random/

Being in a space with anyone is about trust, isn't it. It's about knowing they'll respect boundaries. Knowing they won't overload us when we least need it.
Speaking each others' 'language'.
That's an important thing for teams to know/

Because if you're a team member working with an autistic person, and that trust isn't there, the trust has to be the very first thing you both need.
If it's still not there after working on it, it's not a good match.
And it's OK for it not to be a good match. Know the limits/

A lot of damage can be done by forcing the wrong people to do care work for autistic individuals. We see the worst of it in the media, but there's a lot of low level damage way below that point.
And quite a bit of damage can be done by not trusting autistic specialists/

Some may think all autistic people are in need of significant support. But only 2 out of every 100 autistic people are in care settings.
Learning to trust autistic advisers...that's the missing ingredient in really good co-working around autistic people, too.
It's worth it.