Using Structural Social Work Analysis to Address Autistic Human Rights

Overview: I critically review the ways in which autistic scholars are re-storying (Douglas et al., 2019) and re-authoring (Yergeau, 2018) what it means to be autistic. Informed by structural social work and anti-oppressive practice, I unfold the implications of a new paradigm of autism for social work theory, research, and practice.Proposal text: Despite significant progress, social workers and other helping professionals continue to misunderstand autistic people, focusing largely on their “deficiencies” and “weaknesses” (Kirchner et al., 2016). Their attitudes towards and misconceptions about autism may impact their ability to uphold basic human rights when working with autistic individuals, groups, and families with autistic members (Bean & Krcek, 2012; Ghaderi & Watson, 2019; Haney & Cullen, 2018; Preece & Jordan, 2007; Talib & Paulson, 2015). This paper presentation uses structural scaffolding to understand critical issues in autistic human rights.

Autism is a topic that has been researched for almost a century. Early scholars, including Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger, incorporated the term ‘autism’ onto the academic, medical, and social landscape (Maich & Hall, 2016). This research has ultimately adopted a medicalized and deficit-focused approach to autism, which attempts to fix, cure, or find causes of autism (McGuire, 2016). Medicalized approaches to autism are premised on the perspective that autism is a cognitive, hormonal, or “internal” problem found “within” the individual (Runswick-Cole, 2016). These approaches legitimize interventions by external “experts”, including social workers, in autistic people’s lives that dictate how they can create a ‘good’ (normal) life (Davies, 2016; Yergeau, 2018). As a result of these medicalized approaches to autism, many autistics feel dehumanized (McGuire, 2016; Yergeau, 2018).

Social workers have used a range of approaches to understand autism including: biomedical approaches to autism “treatment” (Kirkwood, 1967; Stoddart, 1998); empowerment approaches (Hiranandni, 2005); and social perspectives which frame disability as environmentally-created (Carter, 2010; Carter, et al., 2013; Haney, 2018; Krcek, 2013). Unfortunately, however, social workers have been implicated in maintaining an ableist system which labels autistics as needing curing, normalization, or skills to “mask” as typical.

Amongst recent paradigmatic shifts in the research landscape and ongoing social reforms, autistic scholars and other individuals within the neurodiversity and critical autism studies movement are: (1) re-storying (Douglas et al., 2019) and re-authoring (Yergeau, 2018) what it means to be autistic in our world; (2) promoting a human rights approach; (3) highlighting their freedom of expression and movement; and (4) finding ways to liberate themselves from the silent violence of medicalized and dehumanizing forms of expertise. Autistic self-advocates and allies are urging for social change(Woods et al., 2018). In line with the mantra, nothing about us, without us, inclusive, participatory, strengths-focused, critical, and emancipatory approaches are forefronted.

In this paper presentation, I critically review this intersectional, collaborative and consciousness-raising paradigmatic shift in autism within social work theory, research, and practice. Informed by structural social work and anti-oppressive practice frameworks, I explore how social workers can use autistics’ knowledge and critically re-frame what autism means within micro, mezzo, and macro theory, research, and practice spaces. Social workers have a responsibility to challenge harmful systems and frameworks that perpetuate poverty, inequality, and humiliation for autistics and remain committed to creating social change that is more consistent with our values of humanism and egalitarianism (Mullay & Mullay, 1997).