Edinburgh & Lothian Asperger Society
(Facebook message us here.)
​
In person, we meet Sat evenings. Formerly we had a great bond with the Filmhouse, it had been our niche place, complete with the staff on friendly terms. We greatly welcome knowing it will reopen in new form this autumn. The great blow to thoughtful Edinburgh folks when it suddenly went bust, of course threw us into a redecide period where to go.
​
Presently meeting Sat evenings from 5:30 at Cameo cinema's bar at Tollcross - 38 Home Street, on main bus route. This is weekly, unless a significant snowfall. Any exceptions or missed weeks can be announced here. We will probably have to make a different choice during the Film festival's run at Cameo in Aug.
​
We continue to have video meets Sun evenings on Skype, at 8:00. Enquirers can conveniently meet us there. Ask for the link. If you have any technical troubles with Skype, we will meet you in simple-to-use site Whereby instead. It's because Whereby put a 45 minute limit on meets' duration, that we switched it to Skype.
​
A weekday meet could also be held, esp in summer, if the Saturdays not suiting everyone. Express an interest in another day. We did this twice in 2019. Also: when post-lockdown reopening started but our usual meet places still not, we met up outdoors when it became allowed: couple of folks preferring Sat afternoon meets around town. We can again if wished.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
Edinburgh + Lothian Asperger Society (ELAS) is an independent peer support group for adults, over 16, with any autistic spectrum condition, either diagnosed or personally detected, on roughly the non-learning-disability part of the spectrum: no line drawn, if we are the level you are comfortable with that's fine. No limit on where you live, come any distance, several have.
​
Enquiries Maurice Frank, chair: to contact box.
About ELAS
ELAS is organised by autistic people and has an elected chair. Membership is free and open to anyone as described above, and to their family like parents and partners. Autism professionals welcome to visit to raise items with us.
ELAS aims to provide a community for autistic people to meet, accept, value and support one another and share ideas and coping strategies.
We aim to link with other autism groups, autism professionals and service providers, and to improve services and conditions for autistic people by promoting autism awareness and providing input on autistic issues to government policy documents.
ELAS Equality Policy constitutes us with a very strong ethic of inclusion and against arbitrary exclusion, the abuse and trauma that can be expected in some autistic groups run by arbitrary leaders and jumping on folks for using an ever more ridiculously growing list of forbidden words. ELAS's inclusion safety aligns us against harmful conflicts in the autistic scene, and for defence of a fair emotionally safer community.
ELAS email google group
Members can discuss topics on the email chatlist in confidence. Drop us a line if interested to join it.
blog edinburghaspergers.blogspot.co.uk
​
NB we are not using Zoom: the fashion for everyone to use it hits folks finding technical troubles even with getting the app let alone using. But from the frustrations of Zoom and realising it's one of the options that folks might want, there is a fairness urge to share some info on it. - You don't need to have the app to be able to join a Zoom meeting, and you can join on any device you choose including a mobile phone. But further to that: if you are given a meeting address including "/j/", the usual form, you are likely to find the Zoom screen putting up barriers trying to force you to download the app, which on many devices you can't, before you can get in. A way round that, deliberately unpublicised by Zoom, is to change "/j/" to "/wc/join/".
Consultation on the new Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodivergence Bill is at consult.gov.scot/mental-health-unit/learning-disabilities-autism-neurodivergence-bill/ described at
www.gov.scot/news/building-a-fairer-scotland-1 until Apr 21.
​
