the submission/report

The submission/report : a practice setter.

A report under the law of Adult Support and Protection, made within a government consultation submission on the autism strategy. Why? - think about that. So that action on it can be shown an automatic obligation and forced to happen, inside a process that the autism scene is always referring back to ongoingly.

The Autism Network Scotland (whose successor the Autism Network Collective is) was based in Strathclyde university used to lead and monitor grassroots engagement with Scottish govt's autism strategy process that ran until 2021. The authorities' responsibility to the report can also be kept displayed here and cited in any setting where it arises, and it will refer back to the autism strategy's receipt of, and responsibility to act according to, the personal safety issues reported to it. This is instead of the authorities, who would be either social work or the police, having a power of choice whether to act on it or not. That is what would happen if the report was made directly to them - the law of Adult Support and Protection would only require them to hold multi-agency meetings to decide what to do about the reported items, and they might decide to do nothing. Clearly the existence of that possibility is unacceptable to aspie grassroots trying to use the protection law to enforce the situation it is meant to create! to enforce that there can be no corruption or betrayals of codes of personal safety and equality, in the aspie community, in groups like ELAS. to enforce in fact, that when a society's stated objective is peer support, nobody and least of all its officeholders can ever get away with betraying that.

Hence it is a breakthrough we all need to latch onto, that a protection report stands made within a contribution to the autism strategy process - submitted by me on 21 Nov 2017 to Scottish Strategy For Autism public consultation. The strategy workers have a responsibility to report it on to the authorities, but they also have a recorded citable duty for the strategy work not to breach the protection issues raised. This ties the strategy, and through it the authorities, to AUTOMATIC having to act on those issues, it establishes them not having even in theory any discretionary choice.

This applies to a report made for ELAS around the actions of its own former chair Mark Keenan, who had to leave the chair, then left ELAS itself. He had dropped a support action in mid progress, betrayed the member being supported, to appease a criminal, then took offensive positions like a ruthless bureaucrat saying that doing that was his last word. These were the clearest breaches there can ever be, of the support trust required for any society like ELAS to be a safe space and ethical, and indeed not cause suicides: exactly its duties to Adult Support and Protection. It is clearly a success for ELAS's equality policy, and how strongly it was written, a success in adversity, that it brought Keenan down instead of being brought down by him. But participants in the autism scene anywhere need to know safely that experiences like Keenan will be deterred or swiftly halted from happening in the first place, and before it damages a group.

For your safety from emotional exploitation manipulation and toxic social dynamics, as folks with social vulnerabilities, you are all entitled to know, from and set by Keenan's case, that the actions described, AND the action of siding with the Keenan-character in any resulting split in a group reducing or factionally hijacking its activities, causing some members any exclusion experiences either by loss of access to activities or by resultingly lost personal ties, would AUTOMATICALLY be prosecuted every time. That is your automatic right, the submission establishes so, and ends needing any authority to choose discretionarily whether to care about you.

Enforcement of this responsibility includes because not upholding it is an action established to risk motivating suicides. It is always right to discuss the existence of other people's suicidalities for the purpose of prevention, but it is always wrong to give them the triggering experiences contrary to prevention. That holds the authorities to these automatic standards of intervention against socially painful corruption. Likewise you need to know for certain, for your safety around the autism scene, that the socially excluding conduct cited in the previous para would be grounds for exclusion from using One Stop Shop services, and from serving as a moderator on a forum site. The forum sites scene tends to be UK-wide, so that point provides a way to broaden beyond Scotland, to citability UK-wide, this whole setting of automatic responsibilities of action against the types of corruption cited above, in any group or service.

The submission raised the obvious question of autism strategy ethics, that any person who has behaved like Keenan should not retain a place on the autism plan working groups, that each council has had to form, as a part of the autism strategy, to apply it locally. Keenan had been ELAS's representative on Edinburgh council's plan working group, chosen at its formation, as a grassroots figure to have on it. No accountable process had been created, for challenging the rightness of his continued place. Public interest demonstrably ethically requires one.

The submission also complements chapter 12, the chapter on corruption, in the grassroots compilation book An Ordinary Life Too which is attached to the autism strategy as an informing document. [I worked on it, but by incredible sad irony now, so did Keenan! Other credits Harry McCormack, Lynne Moffat, David Seagrave.] It makes and records it automatically incumbent on the strategymakers, through the issues cited above, that all the examples of services corruption cited in it shall have protection law action taken upon them.

In order not to give potential triggers for suicidality to any members of vulnerable groups, which step may not be knowingly taken, the submission cites that there has to cease ever to be given to anything, by offices and authorities, certain types of answer. Knowing that we must not be placed in an exploited relationship in terms of adult support and protection. Knowing that an incidence of suicidality also has been associated with autism, from social exclusion suffered from failed communications and from the anxiety commonly accompanying the condition's communication challenges, the responsibility to communicate with effective practicality includes by reason of not giving any potential trigger causes for suicidal feelings.

It follows that this responsibility BARS GIVING ANY TYPES OF ANSWER THAT ARE AVOIDANT of meeting the definite defined needs that exist in the case of any vulnerable group. IT PROVES AND ESTABLISHES THAT NONCOMMITTALITY IS AN EMOTIONAL ABUSE !!!

Hence the submission cites that all protection law authorities at all times perpetually, ARE OBLIGED TO ONLY GIVE THE ACTUAL ANSWER UPHOLDING PERSONAL FAIRNESS, TO EVERYTHING. It cites that" all parties delivering any service, including all public offices and caring agencies, and businesses in like role, cease to be allowed to give any of the following specified types of answer" :

* Be noncommittal,

* Use the word "unfortunately" or any synonyms of it, as a weapon to assert that an unfairness shall stand,

* Deny that they should do anything or answer substantively until an indefinitely deferrable eventuality,

* Ignore, or omit to answer, any of the entire content of the evidence available from the person being answered,

* Declare unilaterally that any step not reasoningly accepted as upholding personal fairness is "their decision",

* "I'm sorry but .." or "I'm afraid .." or "I/we note your comments..." or "I understand how you feel but..." a tough bruising assertion of decision not to fix it.

* Declare unilaterally that any of these types of answer, or any answer not standing up to reasoning, is a last word,

* Assert that these are what people will do,

* Give no answer at all because of being prevented from giving these types of answer,

* Declare any matter of fairness closed, or unilaterally close down contact, before its entire content has been fairly answered, and at a stage preventing this from being ascertained from logical scrutiny of answers given.

Consider how much difference that will make !

It is far stronger, than just asserting these things abstractly with no situation to tie immediate action on them, that they are established linked to a presently outstanding real case. It ties all social work departments, charity regulator OSCR, and most notably of all the police - think of this for everyone's daily wellbeing, it ties the police - TO ONLY EVER TAKE THE LINE IN SUPPORT OF LOGICALLY REASONED PERSONAL FAIRNESS, ON EVERYTHING EVER, AND NEVER CLAIM TO HAVE EVEN IN THEORY A CHOICE OR MOTIVE NOT TO. All types of authority cease to have even in theory the authority to decide not to do that. Noncommittality about it stands proved an emotional abuse and not an option. Anchored in the wellbeing of minorities, which both is suable and is a world human rights principle for defending populations from persecution, WHICH BOTH PLACE IT BEYOND THE POWER OF GOVERNMENTS AND LEGISLATURES EVER TO UNDO IT. So that even at the cyclical times when swings back to authoritarianism and sweeping public order powers become popular, this irreversible breakthrough in fairness would block them.

Maurice Frank.