My name is Priscilla Eyles, I am a trustee at CDA and I train and consult on inclusion in the workplace especially. I have autism and an attention/hyperactivity condition (commonly known as ADHD) and have also been diagnosed with generalised anxiety, from living with the identity I have in a society not designed for me and with the lived experience I have.
The cuts will categorically not force me into full-time work, because I am unable to do full-time work without significant risk of burnout and mental illness. I am unable to focus long enough for full-time work and being around people all day and having to mask aka act how I think I’m supposed to act in a professional setting is exhausting. I have tried many times and every time I have been let go, managed out or fired. And that’s before even talking about how to even find suitable full-time work in a labour market which is cutthroat, insecure and still not accessible or psychologically safe (and far from trauma-informed) for neurodivergent and multiply-marginalised people like me.
My last job which wasn’t even full-time, but ended up being so because of my impossible workload, ended up with me in tears most days, extremely anxious and having to go off-sick for months before finally quitting. I couldn’t even enjoy my weekends because they were consumed with thoughts of how to survive the upcoming days or spent still doing the work that I was not properly supported to do and this was a disability-lead organisation. My boss wouldn’t make allowances for my conditions.
After that experience I said that I would never put myself through that again and I could only work for myself, my trust in any organisation that claims to welcome and support autistic, ADHD employees has been annihilated, because the fact is most of them don’t and don’t even know what it means to support an autistic employee, let alone someone who is also racialised and a cult survivor like me.
Despite all my traumatising employment experiences I still want to work, but the jobs I do need to be ones I can do well in and that support my wellbeing. For as long as most employers continue to fail to adapt to the needs of disabled people like me, the kinds of jobs I can do will often be part-time and/or unconventional and low paid – that means I need financial support to keep going and keep working.
Unless they want Disabled people to go into completely unsuitable and unsustainable jobs only to be fired, let go or have to leave within a few months, leaving people like me with just more accumulated trauma and no savings, reliant on handouts and food banks barely surviving. What kind of life is that?
I also don’t know why some of the most vulnerable and poor people in this society are having to pay for the excesses and tax breaks of the top 1%. Or why failing banks can be bailed out with not so much as a slap on the wrist.
