WAND Sheffield
Our objectives
Our organisation is a peer community for autistic women and other marginalised genders in Sheffield. Many autistic women are not being diagnosed until later life due to diagnostic procedures being based on men, and due to the fact that women are better able to mask or camouflage their autistic symptoms. This can lead to years of mental and emotional strain and resulting mental health problems, relationship problems, social isolation and difficulties in sustaining employment. WAND seeks to rectify this by providing a space where autistic women and marginalised genders can support each other, share experiences and offer informal advice in a supportive environment where they don't have to explain themselves. This is already serving to reduce social isolation amongst our community by allowing women to connect socially and receive advice from those who have real lived experience, such as in applying for jobs or asking for reasonable adjustments, applying for certain benefits, moral support and informal advice over issues such as relationships and sensory difficulties. Those in our community have found ways of socialising through WAND where this has never been possible to them before.
Our activities
We do a number of things to help reduce social isolation and improve mental health amongst our community of autistic women and marginalised genders:
- We run a number of regular social groups for autistic women only, many of these based on activities such as books or crafts
- We have an online discussion group hosted by various members of the WAND team, where anyone from WAND can participate and share their experiences on the given topic (eg. masking) and receive support from others
- We have a WhatsApp community and online forum where women can connect online
- These online platforms can be used by the community to arrange their own meetups
- We run 3-4 larger events per year, where we hire a space and have a guest speaker and/or invite our own members to give lived experience talks
- We network with other local organisations in Sheffield to help signpost our members when they need extra support, eg. for help applying for jobs