Exploring Autistic Ageing with Cos Michael & Trevor Wright

The Brighter Living Fair is an event for adults looking for care and support services in Wandsworth, that promotes healthy, safe and independent lifestyles.

This year’s fair will once again be a festival of events.

We are working with local organisations to put on lots of small events between Saturday 1 and Monday 10 October 2022, to coincide with International Older People’s Day and celebrate five ways to wellbeing: to connect, be active, take notice, keep learning and to give.

Join us for a one day event for autistic people for autistic people with presentations and Q&A. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Cos Michael Trevor Wright FRSA

OUR SPEAKERS

COS MICHAEL - GROWING OLD WELL

Following an autism diagnosis at the age of 50, Cos spent several years at the NAS, leading their Autism and Ageing projects and winning the Autism Professionals Award for Outstanding Adult Services in 2014. Cos has specific knowledge of issues around autism and growing older. She has worked with various university research projects around health and welfare in autistic adulthood and ageing.

Following an autism diagnosis at the age of 50, Cos spent several years at the NAS, leading their Autism and Ageing projects and winning the Autism Professionals Award for Outstanding Adult Services in 2014.

She is now an autism and ageing consultant, delivering training and workshops; and speaking at conferences in the UK and abroad.

Cos has specific knowledge of issues around autism and growing older. She has worked with various university research projects around health and welfare in autistic adulthood and ageing.

She has also worked at the BBC, the National Sound Archive and in the theatre. Cos has a BSc Social Anthropology.

Publications include Is Being Othered a Co-Occurring Condition of Autism? in the Autism in Adulthood journal; and an editorial in the journal, Autism, on Why we need research about autism and ageing, a chapter in The Challenge and Promise of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Mid and Later Life, Ed: Scott Wright. and co-authorship of a number of autism research papers

Cos Michael attended one of our Autism Conferences at Lola Jone Hall, Tooting, SW17 supported by Tooting Leisure Centre and NHS Wandsworth CCG.

TREVOR WRIGHT FRSA - SHOULD I HAVE BURNT SOME CARS?

Trevor is a former social worker and health and social care commissioner, was diagnosed as autistic at the age of 56 and has an autistic daughter. He is the Autistic Co-Chair of the DHSC Autism Strategy Board, author of the 2022 LGA Autism Must Know Guide for Councillors and contributed to the 2021 Skills for Care Autism Commissioning Guide.

Trevor is the current NHS Autism Champion for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, a lead trainer on the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training trial and a co-facilitator on the South London and Maudsley Training the Trainer project for mental health inpatient staff.

Trevor is also a writer with two volumes of poetry, Outsider Heart and Salt Flow published by Big White Shed, the first written soon after his autism diagnosis looking back on the key life changes before that diagnosis and the second exploring themes relating to anxiety and conflict.

He set up the Derby Poetry Festival in 2017 and establisehd a creative writing project for autistic people, Beyond the Spectrum, with Writing East Midlands in 2019 where participants and group facilitators were autistic.

He s a Writer Trustee for the Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature Board and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

-------------------------------------------------------------------