SWAN Workshops - Understanding and Supporting Autistic Wellbeing

Date: Thursday 28th August, 2025

Time: 6.30-8.30pm

SWAN Workshops are for anyone who wishes to learn more about autistic people, whether as an ally (families, friends, carers, colleagues and supporters) or a professional.

Whilst suitable for anyone, workshops are focused on everyday experiences rather than professional contexts. We also offer training sessions for professional development if this is what you are looking for.

What is this workshop all about?

Autism is not a mental health condition, but around 70-80% of autistic individuals have co-occurring mental health conditions. Understanding and supporting differences in autistic wellbeing couldn't be more critical with autistic individuals much more likely to die through suicide, develop eating disorders, self-harm and experience interpersonal victimisation than their non-autistic peers.

This session will give invaluable insights into common differences in the way autistic people experience and interact with the world around us along with how we are treated and responded that play a significant role in our sense of self, safety and wellbeing.

Attendees can expect to develop a greater understanding of wellbeing and barriers and enablers to day-to-day self care for autistic women and non-binary people in general. Discussing both the external and internal factors that impact on autistic well-being as well as consider elements to providing effective support and allyship.

Including:

- Stigma and autistic trauma

- Monotropism and wellbeing

- Developing positive autistic identity - validation and masking

- Importance of belonging

- Managing Energy - burnout, boundaries and expectations

- Feeling safe -Environments and relationships

- The role of interoception and alexithymia

- Autistic Empathy - feeling heard and understood

- Autistic self-care - reframing neuro normative expectations

SWAN

Who we are:

Founded as a charity (SCIO) in 2012 SWAN is an autistic-led Charity, providing services run by and for autistic women and non-binary people across Scotland.

SWAN is an organisation led by autistic women, girls and non-binary people for the benefit of autistic women, girls and non-binary people. We create the change we’d like to see in our lives and in society.We do this by providing opportunities to connect with and learn from one another through information sharing, peer support and mentoring. We work in partnership with autistic women, girls and non-binary people and others to drive the change our community wants to see, and to improve the lives of autistic women, girls and non-binary people in Scotland.

Note: SWAN is inclusive of all autistic-identity - clinical or non-clinical diagnosis, NHS or private, self-diagnosed or self-identified.

What we do:

We provide a range of autistic-led services for autistic women, girls and non-binary people, including online peer support, wellbeing webinars, pre and post diagnosis support, local meet-up groups and short-term counselling.

SWAN also delivers specialist, autistic-led training and consultancy to increase understanding of autism and support you to develop autism-inclusive practices.

All of our work is informed by the lived experience of autistic women, girls and non-binary people.

For further information on any of our services please contact info@swanscotland.org or visit www.swanscotland.org

Feedback from previous SWAN training:

"I really wish I had heard your workshop so much earlier in my career it would have helped a great many people I have worked with, so insightful" NHS Consultant

"This training needs to be rolled out nationally. The expertise of the team is vast." - Children 1st Staff

"its brilliant to have authentic training from an autistic person, I find it so useful, all the examples make it much more real and accessible" - CAMHS Clinician

"More indepth than anything I have heard before about how life feels and things you can do to help The examples were relevant and part of everyday life and made so much sense." - Support worker

"Most educational and enlightening thing I have been to in 2022 can not tell you how helpful it was" - Conference Attendee

"So much more positive and strengths based. It made autism real and day to day and the very human impact of lack of understanding and stigma and masking was hard to hear but so important to hear. Coming from an autistic person made it invaluable and authentic and so much more real and true than anything I’ve read" - High School Teaching Staff

" The level of detail and expertise around each section of the training was so valuable and It was really interactive, thought provoking and a supportive environment to think and discuss, thank you" Charity Management Staff

" The entire session was excellent, this training will really help us improve service delivery" NHS Borders Community Mental Health Teams

"All of it was so insightful, and thought provoking. Thinking through communication processes as a two way process between me and a client, thinking through adjustments and sensory environments and setting expectations in relationships. I will never hear the ‘I don’t know’ response to ‘how are you feeling’ in the same way. I loved that my questions were answered from a personal point of view. In that my facilitator knows first hand what the honest and best response was from the point of view of an autistic woman as oppose to theoretically from someone who has studied autism." School Counselling Service