Hello, this is Anna Kennedy. We’re talking all things autism and lots and lots of news to share and we are going to be talking about a very, very important document that the charity and Metropolitan Police have been working on for the last year. So the first thing I wanted to share was yesterday I went to support one of my ambassadors, Lauren Lovejoy, and she’s been a past guest on women’s radio and she was in London Fashion Week.

She was very, very nervous, but she did so well. I was so proud of her and Stephen Smith, also a past guest, one of our patrons came along and we supported her and there were so many people there from various different countries. She was very nervous, but she did so well.

We were very proud of her. So just to give you a little bit of background about Lauren, she’s one of our autism’s got talent performance. She’s got an amazing voice and she has been bullied in the past and she’s been targeted for being different.

She was also known as a child as the Oakley Duckling. Well, she definitely wasn’t the Oakley Duckling last night. She looked absolutely amazing and if you want to see an article that Lauren has written about her experience, please check out the charity website just to remind you www.annakennedyonline.com. Secondly, I wanted to share another bit of information about one of our charity ambassadors, a game so proud.

You probably saw Inside Our Autistic Minds, which was hosted by the naturalist Chris Packham and it was on BBC Two. Chris was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and Condition that has now officially been absorbed into the definition of the autism spectrum in his early 40s and with his own story helping facilitate understanding of autism, Chris interviewed many, many people and four of them were actually on this particular program. And one of them was one of our ambassadors, Ethan Kumallon, and he shared his experience was that it was been a different and enjoyable experience for me to be part of this documentary.

From the process of applying for the documentary to then filming scenes, my parts of the upcoming episodes, everything about the filming process was life-changing and I do know that his mom and his family were so proud of him and Ethan is such a talented young man. He’s fantastic at dancing, he’s rapping, he writes. He’s just so proud of him and as I am proud of all of our ambassadors.

Again, just to remind you about Autism Squad Talent, we are doing The Roadshow with Daisy Chain in the northeast. So if you are living in the northeast and you would like to enter, Autism Squad Talent, please send in your entry. So if you’re a singer, a dancer, a musician, a magician, write poetry, an artist, we want to see your talent and also the main show I can’t believe we’ve been doing it for 12 years now.

That will be happening in October at the Mermaid Theatre in London. Again, we’re looking for entries from all over the country and overseas. As you know, we’ve had entries from America, from Canada, from Morocco, from Italy, from France.

Just such fantastic talent and what’s happened is it’s been a springboard for many of them to go on to other things. So if you’d like to enter again, all the information is on the charity website. Last thing I just want to share about the charity is the Autism Expo.

That will be happening in June at Brunel University. As you know, we had to postpone the last one due to the train strikes. Keeping fingers crossed, there’ll be no train strikes this time and it’s going to be happening in June and we have full speakers, Cary Grant, Ben Pearson, as you know, that was on Dragon’s Den and again, one of my ambassadors, Alfonso Archer, who supports many, many students with creative arts or music and also Gemma Long, who is an autistic young woman and she will be talking about lots of different projects that she will be participating in and I just want to do the last thing.

As you know, I always talk about folks who sent in a book called Riley the Brave, Sensational Sensors and it’s helped for sensory and emotional challenges. So Jessica Sivanarski is a licensed professional counsellor of mental health and certified production therapist. She’s a presenter, bilingual author and clinical supervisor.

She’s written several books about Riley the Brave that advise parents and professionals on dealing with issues such as transitioning to school and coping with strong emotions. In this story book for young children, Riley wants to go to the fair, but he is worried about the lights, the sounds and the smells. He finds even going to school a challenge for him.

Riley gets help from a therapist who helps brave students like Riley and by the end of the story is happily enjoying the fair. So if you’re interested, the book is available on Amazon. It’s called Riley the Brave Sensational Sensors by Jay Sinarski, spelled S-I-N-A-R-S-K-I, just repeat that again, S-I-N-A-R-S-K-I, available on Amazon for 12.99. So today, I have two guests and both my guests have been working on a document called Stop and Search.

So we have Dion Brown. So Dion is a police officer who has served with the Metropolitan Police for 20 years. He’s currently a detective superintendent based in North East London.

He lives in Essex with his wife and four children. Two of his children have an autism diagnosis. Dion has done much work within the policing to raise autism awareness since his son diagnosed eight years ago and his downtime, which we’ll talk about a little bit later on, is enjoying his family and following Manchester United.

My second guest is Sean Kennedy, my husband. First time I’ve interviewed my husband on radio and he works with our charity, mainly by giving advice to parents, young people and adults. He is autistic and has been given a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome.

He’s a practicing barrister at Salem Law and over the years he has represented many autistic individuals. He is committed to breaking down barriers to inclusion, albeit he admits this is not easy task as there’s a lot of work to be done. His interests are computing programming, cottage cheese, which I know, which we can talk about a bit later on, and Fulham football Welcome to you both.

Thank you. Thank you again for joining me on Women’s Radio. So if I can start with Dion.

So Dion, we met a few years ago when we were raising awareness with the police, so can you talk to us a little bit about your support group that you’ve got going? Yeah, we certainly did. Following Hayden, my son’s diagnosis, I found you via social media from keeping a keen eye on what you were doing to raise awareness because at that time I wanted to learn as much as possible so I could be as big a support as I could be to Hayden. And so yeah, I was following keenly what you were up to.

And then on the back of that, I was trying to raise awareness within policing, within the map around autism, because if I’m being brutally honest, my knowledge was not very much at all prior to Hayden’s diagnosis. So I thought if that was the case for me, then I’m sure it is for many others as well. And so I set about trying to raise awareness internally within policing.

And that’s where you came in and you came to support us with that. So we ran some events for World Autism Awareness Week. And you kindly, as well as Sean, I’m sure we’ll talk about later, but the both of you kindly came to speak to us.

We did some recordings that were shared internally, which I was very grateful for. And yeah, so as you said, we set up an autism support group. We first of all created the Autism Alert Card, which was a tri-force initiative with the MET, City of London Police and BTP.

And then when that was launched, and you know, we’ve seen a lot of success for that, but when that was launched, somebody approached me and said, you know, what are we doing internally to support our officers and staff who may be autistic themselves or parents or carers for those that are. And it was something I hadn’t thought about previously. So we set up an autism support group.

You know, there’s a handful of us at the time at the beginning, but I’m really delighted to say that there’s over 350 members in that support group now. And we meet at least once a month on Teams at the moment, talk about a variety of issues that are affecting us internally and externally. So it’s great.

Oh, wow. So what did you do before you went into the place? What was it? A little bit of background so people can get a little bit of a snapshot of who you are. Yeah, well, it feels like a long time ago now, and I’ve been I’ve been here in London for 20 years now.

But before that, I lived in West Wales. And that’s where I’m from originally. And I worked in a bar immediately before joining the police.

I was one of those lucky people, if you like, in a way, because I always knew what I wanted to do for a job. I always wanted to be a detective. And I was killing time really until I was old enough and eventually joined the police when I was 21.

I moved up here and I’ve been here since Metzora got married and settled in Essex. Oh, wow. As you know, I go to Essex quite a bit now because we do all things autism and Essex with Aston, who’s another one of my charity ambassadors.

So if you ever want to listen to that program, it’s usually the first Thursday of every month. We’re on there for two hours where we bring in various different guests to chat to us. And we’ve been going for quite a while now and it creates a blog too.

So Sean, Sean, my husband, do you want to talk a little bit about yourself? Obviously, I know lots about you, but I’ll leave it to you. Well, I suppose the thing that I would like to say is that I’m not going to bore everyone with background because that’s just not very interesting. Well, not mine anyway.

But the key thing is that I’m focused on at the moment is promoting inclusion in its broader sense. And that’s what I’m trying to do in my practice. And the things that I’m involved with, AKO and other charities, it really is designed to break down the barriers for people, all disabilities, really, because that’s the protected characteristic that I focus on.

Being able to fully participate or as participate as much as they reasonably can in day to day life. And this is why I welcome the initiative with the police service, because it’s sadly neglected, I think, if I’m being perfectly honest, not so much now, as the guidance that we produce shows. There’s more work to be done, but it’s interesting times, I think.

And of course, one thing I will say, whether or not everyone else would agree with me, is that autistic people are generally quite positive towards the police service. Now, that might be quite a radical thing to say these days, but I think it’s generally true. So do you get many adults that approach you about having difficulties with the police or have they experienced stop and search? Because that’s the document that we’re going to be talking about now.

I don’t do criminal law, but of course they do. Over the years, I’ve gained some knowledge about what goes right and what goes wrong with interactions with the police. First things first is you’ve got to break down people’s perceptions of the police and what they’re there for.

And that’s one of the reasons we did this document. It might seem quite obvious what the police are for, but we don’t have to look very far to see that people’s perceptions certainly these days are not that helpful. I’m perfectly frank, not particularly accurate.

And secondly, with all my interactions with people, I’ve had contact with the police and it’s not gone that well. The theme is clear communication and keeping calm. And that’s something I think Dion would agree is incumbent on both parties, in an interaction.

Absolutely, Sean, from the group that can complete the communication is the most vital part, 100%. And poor communication. And it’s a disaster.

I mean, not just for autistic people, but for all members of the public, but for autistic people, it’s just dreadful. I mean, it can make a bad situation worse very quickly. So how did this collaboration come about? So why did you decide and why did we decide on stop and search document? What made it, we decide, right, this is something that we’ve got to do.

And I know we’ve been working on it, but I think it’s been over a year now, if I remember correctly. So why stop and search? Well, I’ll start off Dion. I’ve seen a gap here that I thought needed to be filled involving the police and autistic people.

And I contacted the Metropolitan Police Service. The initial reaction was a bit, frankly, lukewarm. And then when Dion got involved, because he was involved with KL, then the afterburners got on it.

And it started to accelerate at a rate of knots, didn’t it, Dion? Yeah, it did. Yeah, I’m pleased you put it that way, Sean, because after the initial frustration, but when I saw what you were proposing, I thought it was a fantastic idea and couldn’t wait to get involved with it and get it off the ground. In fairness to your colleagues, it was a time that stopping search was a particularly prominent issue in what it always is quite prominent, but it particularly felt that time.

And of course, in fairness to them, they may not have known what the agenda was. But when we produced a working draft, that’s when people started to take notice, didn’t they? Absolutely. And you’re right in what you say, Sean, you know, stopping search is always an emotive subject, and it draws quite strong feelings from people on either side, really.

So yeah, they’ll certainly get there. Can I ask who contributed to the document? Because obviously, we like to include people who are on the autistic spectrum, because obviously, the document is about them. So can we just talk a little bit about contributions that were made? Well, I think, Anna, we acknowledged everyone’s contribution, but we can unpack that a little bit.

And we contacted the professionals who are identified, such as Professor Sam and Baron Cohen, or the professionals that we’ve already identified and acknowledged. I spoke to a lot of autistic people about it who would not be named. Yeah.

The autism, I mean, there was a lot of people internally within the Metropolitan Police contributed. Some autistic, a lot of them were. Yeah.

I think if I had to put my hand on my heart and say, the contributions mainly came from, formally and informally, from autistic people, albeit they didn’t necessarily want to be personally identified. Okay. Is there an organisation called the Police Autism Association? Is that right? Yeah.

Well, Deion can tell us all about them. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we did.

So when Sean and I had come up with a draft, I sent it to the chair of the National Police Autism Association who put it on their site to say clearly that Sean and I were asking for some feedback around the guidance of which there was quite a bit, to be honest, most of which was positive and any feedback that I got, I shared with Sean and we made the changes, didn’t we, based on the feedback that we received? I mean, to be perfectly honest, all feedback was incorporated. I didn’t think some of it was a little bit, needed a bit of tweaking, but no, it was all pretty fair. I was just going to say for people who might not know who the National Police Autism Association are, they’re a privately run group of UK police officers and staff supporting colleagues affected and who are diagnosed with autism and other neurodivergent conditions such as dyslexia, dysfraxia and ADHD.

We welcome all police personnel with a personal family or professional interest in these conditions and they offer free membership to the policing community and selected third parties. So if you’re interested, it’s the National Police Association, so it’s npa.org.uk. That’s if you’re interested in finding out a little bit more about this association. So sorry, carry on guys.

One thing I want to say about the National Police Autism Association and other people who provided feedback, and we’re talking about members, police officers, mainly members of the Metropolitan Police Service. They were very keen that, you know, there had to be a culture of improvement. So there was no suggestion that everything’s okay, nothing to see here.

They wanted to see positive change, even though that was their employer, they felt empowered to be able to speak out. So there is a movement, if you like, within the police service and that’s all the feedback I’ve had from police officers. Yeah, we need to get better at this.

Would you agree, Dion? Oh, absolutely, Sean, you know, and listening and engaging with people is the best way to do that, you know, we can always do things better. It’s better not to be defensive about where we’ve dealt with something where perhaps it hasn’t gone as well as it possibly could. So we take that as a learning opportunity and always looking at ways that we can improve those interactions in the future.

And I think what’s been done with the guidance is a great way of doing that. So can we talk a little bit about the document and go through the various different chapters so that if people do download it and when they actually read it, then it might think, all right, that’s what Sean’s talking about. Oh, that’s what Dion was talking about.

Would you mind breaking it down a little bit, please? Yes, certainly. Well, let me just sort of give a background on what we’re trying to achieve. And then Dion can maybe talk about what Stop & Search is, if you like.

It’s sort of cast within the real life experience of a fictional autistic person, although hand on heart, these are his experience is based on real life examples that I’ve heard quite a few times. It portrays how Stop & Search goes badly and how it goes much better. Now, the reason we use Stop & Search, not because this is the only thing autistic people should be interested in, it’s because this is a time when an autistic person, or anyone for that matter, can come in contact with the police.

And they may have not have committed a crime or they may have committed a crime, of course. And it’s an interaction with the police that people need to be prepared for, and they need to know what to do when it happens. Would that be a fair assumption, Dion? Yeah, I would agree with that, Sean.

Yeah, absolutely. So, what we are keen to do is not get into the debate about the pros and cons of Stop & Search. That is just not the purpose of this document.

It’s not our place to start saying it should be used more widely, less widely, not really our concern. It was a very sort of neutral portrayal of Stop & Search within the context of an autistic person. Okay, I was just going to say, you’ve got some scenarios here, and just so that it might help people that are listening.

Could you go through maybe one or two of the scenarios and talk about, you know, what’s in the document? So, I’m looking at here scenario one, you’ve got PC Nicole Bryan, the word response to a car that took a call about recent burglary. So, could you mind talking about one of the scenarios so that it might make it a little bit clearer for people? Well, and in scenario one, we’ve got two police officers who were formed of a burglary where it’s taking place. And as you would expect, they’re on what they call response.

So, they’re in a car driving around, get a call, tell me if I’m getting this wrong, Dion. And they, a suspect, a description of a suspect is given to them. Now, being police officers, they have to look for potential matches for this description, one of which is a young chap called Adrian.

Yeah. And he’s walking along, he looks, he matches this description. PC O’Brien and PC Grull, those are the two police officers in question, approach Adrian, who has a background of listening to a whole lot of rumours about the police he’s heard from his mates, he runs away from them, they run after him, he gets called and it all goes badly wrong.

Yeah. Of course, that was, and he’s an autistic person. And this is because he’d listened to what other people had told him about the police.

Okay, that didn’t go particularly well. The second scenario is that Adrian, who’s the chap in question, he’d actually done a bit of background work on the police. He’d attended a meeting involving some community work with two police officers, found out a little bit about stop and search.

And then when the officers approached him, he’d just come back from his gaming club, he had always gaming paraphernalia with him. Rather congenial conversation took place. And the police officers decided, well, clearly Adrian is not the person we need to be looking for.

There wasn’t even a stop and search. All calm, nothing to see here, balanced, friendly. I mean, there’s no doubt he would say hello to the police officers afterwards.

Would that, does that summarise it, do you? Yeah, yeah, that summarises it perfectly sure. And I think, by way of the feedback that we’ve had around this, I mean, having linked to scenario like that, to make it like a lived a real life experience, if you’d like, for the person reading who can sort of relate to it. I think that was, that’s the beauty of the document really.

And that’s been, that’s been seen in the feedback that we’ve received, because people can visualise how that interaction would play out and how it could go potentially in the wrong direction with the first scenario and well in the second. And again, it’s designed to raise that awareness, you know, on both sides, on the side of the police officer, and of course, on the side of the person that’s being stopped. Can I just ask Dion, with reference to stop and search, obviously, the police have, you know, they’re under an enormous amount of pressure.

So, how would they know and what, and I’m just thinking about the pressures of doing things differently when, you know, approaching an autistic person. Do you think it’s realistic that they’re going to be able to take all of this information on board? Can you see where I’m coming from? Yeah, yeah, I see where you’re coming from. And again, you know, it’s difficult, it is challenging, particularly when, you know, there’s a fast moving scenario.

And that’s the difficulty when police officers have to make decisions very quickly at times, you know, there’s not a lot of thinking time. And that’s why having awareness is important, because, you know, if you have that awareness, then you’ve got it in the back of your mind, so that when you come across a situation where you think that the person you’re dealing with may be autistic, then perhaps you can alter the way that you would interact with that person to make it a more positive interaction. You can take things into account and adapt accordingly.

And I think that is important, but I can’t say that, you know, it’s always the case, you know, particularly if it’s something to do with weapons or anything like that, then obviously, there’s a risk to the public, there’s a risk to the officers involved and others. So not every situation is going to be perfect. You know, but as you said, you know, there’s a lot of time constraints and an urgency in the work that we’re doing, and we have to react accordingly.

So you’ve got your support group that you meet every month. Can I just say one thing there, just to add to what Dion said? Yeah, okay. I analyse literally hundreds of interactions with, well, stop and search.

Now, this is what I could get hold of. I don’t have any internal information that the police have. But without question, the thing that may, I mean, you had the attitude of the person being stopped and searched and make that whatever you will, unnecessarily aggressive, and we all understand that this is a stressful situation.

The attitude of the police officers, it was a need of improvement. But the thing that really kind of was open to be improved was good communication and a good approach really did, autistic person or non-autistic person, that really did help the interaction. And that’s the takeaway here.

Of course, police officers have got a lot on their plate. And there’s no end of training each police officer could receive. The reality is for autistic people, good communication makes things so much better.

Can I say, Sean, as you as an autistic person, what does good communication mean to you? So if you were stopped by a police officer, what would be good communication for you? Well, for any mind, it’s a potentially stressful situation. And we talked about this in the document. We need to keep the message simple.

Because when people are stressed, their communication skills are diminished. So keep conversation relevant, simple and purposeful. That’s the message.

If, and some stop long convoluted explanations, which you can’t even understand them if you’re at any time, that won’t work. But good communication, it’s very, very effective. So going back to what I was going to ask you, Dion, did you discuss the document within your support group that you have monthly and what sort of comments were made or suggestions or recommendations were made or did they welcome it? Yeah, no, they did welcome it.

And yeah, we did discuss it. And there was some feedback. So for example, I can speak about Suzanne Burke, who’s a member of the support group and is on the autism support group committee.

And she’s also the met representative for the National Police Autism Association. So she was well placed, ready to offer some feedback and advice. And when we launched it, looking at the wider picture, we have an ADHD alliance.

And they’ve seen the document that we’ve created. And they’ve been really, really impressed with it. And they think that, you know, perhaps that they could look to create something similar.

So again, yeah, so again, I’m taking that as a really positive sign that it’s been, it’s been well, well received. So obviously, the documents being circulated. And so can we have some of the feedback that’s been given? And who have we circulated? Obviously, I know, but who have we circulated it to so far? Because obviously, the official press release is not going to be coming out until Autism Awareness Week.

But can we give a little bit of background of who we’ve shared it with so far? And what sort of comments we’ve had? Well, all police services in the UK have had a copy. The feedback has been positive. Some individual police officers have responded.

One was actually quite critical of how the officer, a little bit critical of how the officers conducted themselves. And I thought, you do realize this is a fictional scenario, don’t you? But anyway, I say that by way of a joke, it was the feedback was trying to be, trying to be helpful. But no, it was, it’s been all very, very positive.

And so it’s gone to the police, police services, or they can use it internally. I mean, Dionne can talk about the wider initiatives within the police service generally. It’s gone to all MPs in the London area, obviously, because the Met only covers the London area, the London Assembly, and it’s gone to local authorities and police and crime commissioners.

Okay. Do you want to add anything, Dionne? Yeah, just there’s a couple of recent ones that have come in direct to me. That’s the beauty of this.

I mean, some people are going in to Sean and a charity and others are coming direct into me. And so we share the feedback that we get. So somebody from Guernsey police made contact.

So it made its way out there. And again, that was a glowing feedback. And they were going to be going to be promoting it where they were.

I’ve had contact from Essex and Hertfordshire. And a superintendent in Essex wants to meet with me to discuss it further, and make sure that they are advertising the existence of it and encouraging its use in their area. So it’s all really, really positive so far.

That’s great. And it’s going to become a booklet, I believe. And also when you actually look at it online, it’s in large print too.

That’s right. Yeah. So we’re just we’re just looking at the moment for the funding and bits and pieces to get the prints done.

But the, as you say, I know the digital formats are available online, both in standard and large print for free download. So where can they find it if people looking for it? And also you spoke about the alert cards. Where can people find that? Yeah, so it’s available for free download via the Met website.

And so if they land on the homepage of the Met website and type in autism, it should come up as a resource that’s available to download. And in terms of the alert card, that was something that Sean was keen to get into the scenarios for the guidance. And so if anybody thinks that they would like an alert card, they can request it by emailing autism.met.police.uk. Just on the alert card, I’ve got one anecdote.

I can’t give away details, but someone contacted me recently who’d had an interaction with the police that had, let’s just say it was ongoing and this chap’s autistic. And the police service involved had been one of the contributors to the alert card, if I can put it like that. And I spoke to him and his parents and I said, well, there seems to be not an understanding of X’s diagnosis.

You do realize that they support this alert card and I sent them a copy of our document, which obviously identifies the police service in question. And that was very helpful because they went back to the police officer that they were dealing with in that police service and the whole thing changed. Not that they didn’t turn a blind eye to what had happened, but the whole approach to how the matter was being investigated changed.

So that’s an example of the alert card and we include the alert card in the guidance where these kind of initiatives can have a beneficial positive result. Sounds good. So Sean and myself, we went along to the Metropolitan Police, oh, I think about two months ago now, I can’t remember, and we visited with Dionne and the Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Jane Connors, and she has also contributed to the documents.

I’ll just read a little bit about what she’s put. I’m extremely pleased to support this helpful guidance on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Service will become a valuable resource to provide informative context and practical advice to both police officers and persons with autism. By assisting us to develop our understanding of autism, it will lead to improved stop and search encounters and build stronger relationships with the autistic community.

Stop and search is a very important tool that can be used by the police to combat crime and help keep communities safe. It is however extremely intrusive to all who are stopped and searched by a police officer. Each and every interaction between members of the public and the police officer must be handled professionally and respectively.

This guidance will ensure that officers are able to interact much more sensitively with those with autism and improve the interactions that take place. So I’m just going to throw something in which we previously discussed Dionne. Obviously at the moment, there’s not, how can I say it, negative comments across social media and articles which obviously spoils it for the police officers that are doing a fantastic job.

So somebody’s saying about the stop and search and they’re obviously a little bit worried about oh how do I know that this is going to be a positive experience for me. Do you want to add anything to that Dionne? Yeah, as you said Anna, I think you’re supposed to say that there is a lot of negativity around at the moment and of course I can understand the reasons for that and that’s why doing something like this was so important and something that I saw was something really positive. Working with yourself, the charity and Sean, it was something I saw as a no-brainer really to work with you on this and get the guidance out there to show that we are keen to engage with the communities and have that understanding so that we can serve the communities as best as we can and that’s why I’ve been pleased with the positive feedback that we’ve had so far and I hope that the guidance goes some way to improving any interaction that you might see in the future.

That’s brilliant, thank you for sharing that. I get asked a lot from families, from individuals who are autistic, you know, can I become a police officer? Can I go into the army? Whatever it is that they may do, what’s the situation if they feel that they would like themselves? What’s the application process? What is it that they need to do? Well I think first of all it’s important to say absolutely that they can. We’ve got many police officers within the Met who are autistic and you know the work that we’ve done internally I think has gone some way towards helping those officers and staff be open about their diagnosis because I’m sure from the people I’ve spoken to there’s been a little bit of fear about being open about that in the past but I think we’re in such a much better place at the moment where people do feel confident to be open about their diagnosis and it’s not a barrier to prevent them from joining.

By all means they can do that and you know we’re recruiting at the moment so I would encourage anybody out there if it fancies a career in policing to apply. Like I said at the beginning I’ve been doing it for 20 years and you know I always wanted to do it and I’m certainly a very rewarding profession so please I wouldn’t want anybody out there to think that just because they have a diagnosis that that prevents them from joining. Okay so what’s the process? What do they need to do? So they’ve gone to the website and then what happens? As far as I know Anna I’m a little bit out of the loop.

It’s been a while since I did mine but I think there’s an application form that you can do online and there are some screening questions and if you get through those then I think you’re invited for an interview. I believe I wouldn’t want to give wrong information at the moment because I haven’t looked it up. Okay Sean thank you.

That’s right you obviously have to fill in an application form. Then there’s a sort of filtering assessment that you go through and it will be a series of scenarios just to see if you’re able to you’re the right kind of material as far as the result of those assessments are concerned. Then there’s a series of interviews and there’ll also be I think you have to do the dreaded bleep test as well.

That’s before you get into the job so that your fitness is your fitness is assessed. Once you’ve got all through that then you go through a training process and then once you’ve gotten through that which is is it 12 or 16 weeks do you? I think it might be 16 weeks and then once you’ve gotten through all of that from the date you start you’re still on probation for two years and then after that you become a substantive officer. Okay I wonder if there you get reasonable adjustments and what’s not reasonable.

I want me to talk about that. This is definitely my thing. Reason adjustments apply to stop and search.

We need to talk about this because it’s actually quite important. Reason adjustments have to be made for everyone in employment to and reasonable adjustments means taking reasonable steps to remove any disadvantages they’re subject to as a result of any feature of their job. Yeah a reasonable adjustment doesn’t mean that course if you don’t have core skills you can’t make reasonable adjustments in terms of if you don’t have core skills you can’t be employed.

That would not be a reasonable adjustment. However, reasonable adjustments are applicable to police officers and they are made throughout the police services in the United Kingdom and just to add to what Dion said about can autistic people become police officers well the obvious the answer is obviously yes but I would actually go a little bit further than that Dion and I’d say there is some reason to believe that autistic people could be because we can’t you can’t make generalizations but you could see why autistic people might be particularly well suited to a job in the police service but anyway I’ll let you talk about that but reasonable adjustments also apply to stop and search. Now I think Dion needs to tell us a little bit about what stop and search is but anyway the stop and search the reasonable adjustments in terms of stop and search if an autistic person is subject to any particular disadvantage during a stop and search then its reasonable adjustments should be made as long as the police officers knew the person was autistic that’s the benefits of carrying the autism alert card and by the way if you carry an autism alert card and you’re not autistic you can get in serious trouble Dion can’t you because wasting a police officer’s time is a serious offence is that not correct? That is correct but at the same at the same time I think it’s important to mention that having an alert card and we spoke about it when we were doing the guidance is it’s not a get out of jail free card it’s not you know a free pastor to do what you want you’d still be dealt with accordingly and in terms of what you’ve done.

So let’s kill that myth right off. Having a disability does not give you any immunity to committing a crime absolutely not never has done never will do so we can we can deal with that and I hope it has been dealt with but the best reasonable adjustment that can happen during a stop and search for an autistic person is and there we’ve listed a few but the best one is clear communication. But don’t forget we also have make crime which I’ve also basically campaigned about with various different charities that sadly some of our young autistic individuals and adults sadly have been coerced into make crime when they’re trying to make friends they’re not realizing you know what’s going on so there’s obviously that to take into consideration as well.

But that would that would be taken into account by well first of all the police and ultimately if they were involved Crown Prosecution Service but the the the rule is having a disability autism or any other disability does not give you any immunity from committing a crime. However Dion it’s over to you now you’re the you’re the legal expert what is stop and search because we’ve avoided we’re talking about stop and search what what is it? Yeah I was conscious of that Sean I didn’t want to get too bogged down with the acts and sections and bits and pieces but you know stop and search is it’s a vital tool for police officers to prevent and to take crime ultimately and I know we we break it down within the guidance to to the main powers that police would use in terms of searching and you’ve got section one of the police and criminal evidence act the the section 60 that we spoke about and section 23 the misuse of drugs act so for the most common common powers that the police would use for stop and search and as I mentioned earlier they are sort of is an emotive subject that draws strong feelings from people but in the absence of any better solutions they are the powers that are available to us and and you know they ultimately they’re there to to protect people and prevent and detect crime. So we we we break it down in the I mean there’s a there’s a mnemonic mnemonic go wisely should actually go wisely that identifies all the steps that should be gone through in a stop and search.

Would it be fair to say Dion it’s you know a police officer can’t don’t like the look of someone and just stop and search them? No absolutely not Sean you know and I’m glad you mentioned the mnemonic there so yeah there needs to be grounds for that search and you know seamless link there the G in go wisely doesn’t stand for grounds so you know the police officer needs to explain to the person you know why why they’re stopping and searching them and give those grounds for the suspicion as to why they’ve been stopped and going to be searched and then I mean do you want me I mean I could go through the whole go wisely if you like but I’ll leave that up to you. I think Hannah’s Hannah’s the do you want Dion to go through this it’s actually quite important because it yeah I think it because we still we’ve still got time so if it can be so that you know people can listening in that might be worried about you know what is allowed with reference to stop and search as well you know what can they do what can’t they do what am I allowed to do what am I allowed not to do type of things so maybe if you could go through that deal that would be great yeah of course yeah no problem at all um so yeah the police officer should be um they’re required to explain the grounds for for the search um so they’d be telling them why why they’ve been stopped and why they’re going to be searched so the O for go wisely is object so they must give a clear explanation of the object that they’re searching for on the purpose of the search yeah and then you’ve got the warrant card so this is again this is an important aspect so a warrant card is something that all police officers carrying is it’s what identifies us as police officers um and it has our warrant number and photo on it so you can see that it is the person that’s that’s in front of you um so you use that to to identify yourself which leads onto the the I and go wisely uh the other identity of the officer um you know you you are required to to give the name and number which is unique to us to the person that you’re stopping in searching and also the station which is the S and the station in which that police officer is attached to and then the E would be entitlement in terms of the person being searched is entitled to a copy written record of the copy of the search um and the L is the legal power so as I touched upon a little bit earlier um the different powers that we have to stop and search people so that’s the legal power you use so the person being stopped in search would be would be told under which power that that’s been undertaken for example section one of the police and criminal evidence act and the why is um you’re you’re being detained so you need to inform the person they are being detained for the purposes of search yeah I think for me number one is so say you’re an autistic person and you don’t like to be touched and then they’re obviously going to be searching or if your let’s say your conversational skills are not brilliant or say someone like Angelo might might get stopped how would they get around something like that can I can I just say yeah and Dion can can articulate this further but you know the chances of someone like being Angelo like Angelo being stopped in search are pretty low would you agree Dion yeah I would based on based on what I know of Angela I would agree yeah yeah um that doesn’t mean to say it’s never gonna it’s never gonna happen there has to be a con you know sort of degree of proportionality about concerns yeah yeah the other thing is um go wisely those are the steps that need to be followed it’s quite possible that um an officer could abandon a search yeah if for what reason they just think well I’ve made a mistake here um a genuine mistake even though I people said I had the grounds to carry out the search but one thing I have to stress this yet again that if you have an interaction with a police officer before they’ve decided to search you yeah and the and it’s a positive interaction a bit like we had in scenario two the police officer or police officers may again think well there’s no point searching this person it’s going to be a waste of our time where’s to their time we’ve got better things to do yeah yeah it might be um very much uh while obviously quite a few years ago and Patrick was stopped and because of his anxiety started running away um and then they stopped him and they asked him to empty his pockets and then they he just got so anxious this he said can you ring my mom so they obviously rang me and they said um we stopped you so it’s very anxious you know no reason to go any further so what shall we do shall we ring the hospital and I think because his anxiety levels were so high and I said no just send him home he’ll be fine and I’ll reassure him so and that’s what happened but obviously he got very anxious about the whole thing and he sort of kept repeating it but then it was fine I mean we have to stress that all these things are things that have to be managed with autistic people yeah but one thing that has to be stressed is that the police are not really that interested in having this kind of interaction that with anyone they don’t think has committed a crime or in this case carrying prohibited items would that be a reasonable deal yeah no absolutely I’d agree with that Sean I mean the police don’t really go around looking for people to search um not you know a lot oh we we don’t got much time to we’ve got a lot got a bit of time on our hands let’s go and search three people it just doesn’t work like that does it Dion no no it doesn’t and um you know I think it’s important to mention as well that what I didn’t say earlier on in terms of the body one camera so the police officers they’re out there now are wearing body one camera so those those searches they’ll they’ll be recording recording on those devices as well so they can see that they’ve followed um the rules so to speak in terms of of the stop and search and they’ve given those grounds and uh and the powers etc so uh that’s that’s a little safety net also for for um not only for the police officer but the person being stopped so just to remind everybody if they want to check the document out where can they find it please um the guidance document can be found via the met website um I can share some links with you Anna if you if you wanted to share those via your channels that will take you directly to the document um but failing that if you go to the the met website and type in autism it will come up as um as a guidance document that is available for download and also if you type autism stop and search in your favorite search engine yeah I’m not going to mention because I use google but there are many other great search engines out there stop and search guidance for autistic people is the first thing that comes up thank you so because women’s radio is always promoting mental health and well-being um Dion you have obviously a stressful job and obviously father you have four children of which two are autistic what do you do for your own mental health and well-being what do you do to relax um well I’m just spending time with the family it’s nice to you know away from work to spend a bit of quality time with them um and I enjoy watching tv uh my wife Sarah would say to me that why do you watch so many crime documentaries don’t you get enough of that at work I do all the fictional ones um but I’m accurate at all um but I yeah I enjoy I enjoy watching football I think she probably prefers it if I watch uh crime documentaries rather than football but uh I follow Manchester United uh for my sin so um I do enjoy enjoy football in my spare time and just being out outdoors really oh that’s that’s good so obviously you know everybody’s we’re living in such uncertain times at the minute and the the news is full of doom and gloom so we need to do something to keep our own mental health and well-being and what about you Sean well I have absolutely perfect mental health I don’t need to take steps to maintain but I’m afraid I’m a bit predictable in terms as an autistic person I use my computer um like to watch football I’m a fallen fan because I’ve got more taste than Dion obviously uh the joke is for Manchester United fans is that um when they’re playing away the the horn fans think you only live around the corner or we’ll race you back to London that’s another favorite um however I do have the edge on Dion because I’ve actually I’m someone who’s actually seen George Best play in person I don’t know Dion has he certainly won’t be seeing him anymore unfortunately not so uh well I’m not going to get into that um what a legend otherwise um but what I would say with you know on a more serious note you know if people do have mental health difficulties you know I think they should be encouraged to seek an intervention frankly um they they should be able to approach their employer they should be able to approach in the first instance their general practitioner and if they have other issues in relation to their lives particularly in relation to social care they should be able to um they should have access they should they’re open to make an assessment have an assessment of their needs and have their needs met and for a lot of disabled people autistic people legal aid is available to help them if that would be of assistance and I can actually give you the number that they can ring to see if they’re eligible for legally I was just going to say that if you could do that that would be helpful shall I do it now yes please it’s 0 3 4 5 3 4 5 4 3 4 5 yeah just say that again it’s 0 3 4 5 3 4 5 4 3 4 5 um just very quickly we’ve got a few minutes left obviously people are talking about the mental health system is just so overwhelmed and people are having to wait years and years you’ve got any suggestions shown that if they’re desperate well I think follow follow the the suggestions I’ve just made really have an intervention as early as possible uh seek an intervention as early as possible I should I would say um and don’t let it fester yeah they tend to solve it’s crisis the wrong language to use and I’m apologizing already for using it but um things can get worse and try and get an intervention before they do get worse so if you’re listening in and you’d like to be a guest on women’s radio talking all things autism please contact me on the charity website it’s www.anna kennedy online.com lots of information on the website on the latest news pages updated regularly we have a resources page as well and if you feel that there should be resources on there that are not on there currently please let us know we’re always open to sharing resources networking any ideas that you might have to improve the website please let us know if you want to follow me on social media it’s at anna kennedy one on twitter anna kennedy online on facebook and at anna kennedy obi on instagram um what about you guys have you got social media handles that people can follow you on instagram it’s only really linked in um for me um anna um so um uh if you search um dion brown on linkedin i don’t think there’s too many of us but um i’m on there under that name and what about you sean i don’t really use social media but the law firm that i’m part of tell them law if you search social media you can find us and particularly in terms of um on linkedin and instagram in particular we do a lot of on disability um do some interesting posts that people find informed to give some of the background so people can find out more about disability what it actually means to be disabled and what rights are available to if you are disabled so it’s www.talem.com okay so that’s great so i just want to thank both of you for chatting to me and talking to me about the stop and search document i’m so pleased that it’s finally out there and we’re obviously going to be doing some training um probably in april or a little bit later on in the year if any of the questions about the document so um yeah just keep moving forward and all we can do is keep pushing and just wanted to thank you very much and have a good day and really appreciate you chatting to me thanks very much for having me thank you thank you thank you everyone bye take care speak to you again soon