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You and Yours听- Transcript 大象传媒 Radio 4 |
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TX: 19.10.04 - Autism Call You & Yours - Part 1 PRESENTER:听PETER WHITE |
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THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT.听 BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 大象传媒 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WHITE And on Call You and Yours at around half past twelve we continue with our in depth look at autism and Asperger's Syndrome. And today we want to hear from you - whether you have the condition or care for somebody who does. First though another chance to listen to some of the most thought provoking moments from the series so far. 听 MONTAGE Fly winner. 听 Fly, fly. 听 Ever so. 听 High. 听 The mother, the person that loves their child, isn't necessarily loved back - the mother is a tool for getting what the child wants. So mother is dragged to the fridge to get the food because mother is the means of getting the food or the things that are needed, rather than mother as the person you love. So it's very difficult, it's - there's a rejection that is also difficult. 听 I am Helen. I see all the words in my head but they don't come out of my mouth. Perhaps an odd word is right but most of them are missing. 听 My daughter Helen is eight years old now. Her major source of frustration through her autism is the fact that she can't speak. 听 I really wanted to speak and I knew that I wasn't hearing everything properly because I couldn't always say words and work out how to speak so people can understand me. 听 I'm James and I'm Tom's friend. Sometimes if someone annoys him he can get really stressed. He sits in the corner of the room and he has his head in his hands. Other times he just hits people and stuff like that. 听 And do you know why he does these things? 听 Yeah cos he's autistic. 听 Tom why are you laughing so much? 听 It just sounds weird. 听 When he was three or four he would only eat two things - sausages and carrots. He wouldn't change himself, he would be defecating all around the house, he may be throwing things, he would have no language and now following this regime he wakes at 6.30 in the morning, he comes down for breakfast, he eats his breakfast, he goes upstairs, gets out of his pyjamas, changes into his school uniform, jumps on the bus happy as Larry. 听 If this were a treatment for child leukaemia and one authority were paying for it and another authority were not paying for it there'd be people out on the streets en masse. These children with autism for some reason they just seem to be put on the back burner and you really have to fight for everything. 听 WHITE Just some of the views and experiences we've heard about in the last couple of weeks. Our guest on Call You and Yours today is the actress Jane Asher, who's president of the National Autistic Society. I want to ask you about that question of resources but first of all I mean how did you get involved with autism and the association? 听 ASHER It was about 21, 22 years ago I went to a party at the House of Commons which was given on behalf of various children's charities and I was there I think representing Save the Children, to collect a cheque for them, and they'd invited children from the various charities for tea and there was one table of children who were behaving very differently, they had no obvious disability but I could see that there was something very out of the ordinary about the way they were interacting with each other - they weren't laughing or joking, they weren't perhaps misbehaving and throwing things at each other as you might see children, young children at a party. Of course you can imagine these in fact turned out to be children with autism. I had no idea at that time what autism was at all, I'd vaguely heard of it but had no real comprehensive. And the carer that was looking after the children who explained it to me in fact I later discovered was Lorna Wing, who of course is one of the world authorities on autism, so I couldn't have had a better first introduction to it. And when they later approached me and said would I open a playgroup, I think, or something I was already so interested in the condition that I immediately said yes I would love to help. And that led on to other things and the more, as anyone knows who has experienced autism in any form, the more I got into it, the more I learnt about it, not only the more distressed I became at the lack of provision and the immense unhappiness suffered by so many people but also the more interested and aware I became of how weird the way we all look at the world is and how fascinating to find a completely different way of looking at the world that of course can be extremely distressing but also makes you think about the way we all interact with each other. 听 WHITE Can I just ask you about that lack, that you mentioned, the last contributor in the montage said that with autism you have to fight for everything - what do you think the biggest lack is? 听 ASHER I have to say hearing that, that summed it up to me, I mean parents and carers and people with autism and Asperger's themselves have to fight every inch of the way, even if you manage to take your local authority to tribunal because they're not giving you what is your right and even if you manage to win that case still they sometimes don't give you what is your right, they just say - Well yeah you won but we haven't got the money and that's it. I mean it's unthinkable. I'm always a little wary of coming down on one specific gap because it might imply I'm happy with the other gaps, which I'm certainly not, they still exist right the way through from diagnosis, primary, secondary, further education and so on. But I suppose if I had to pick in terms of scale I think the huge terrifying gap is in adult provision. I mean now that we know the numbers of children in school there's going to be a tidal wave of this generation of children moving on to a complete lack of further education, of college, of supported employment, of adult placement. And what is most frightening, not only is there no provision, there's no planning going on at all for future provision and I think this is going to be a real problem very soon. 听 WHITE Well Jane Asher thank you very much for the moment. Jane will be with us throughout the phone-in, in a way by highlighting the problems of adults that's one of the things we'd like to highlight and if we could hear from more of you who either have the condition or perhaps have relatives who are coping do give us a call. We want to hear people's personal experiences, we also want to hear from people perhaps who are grappling from where and how to educate their child or just getting a diagnosis in the first place. Phone us with your stories and experiences on 08700 100 444, you can still e-mail us via the website at bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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