In 2014, I started working with children and young people with stress conditions and traumas. Initially, it was children and young people with autism spectrum conditions who had been exposed to far too many school-related traumatic events and who had developed involuntary school absenteeism.
The neuroaffirmative approach is based on the understanding that people function differently – including neurologically. The idea stems from the international neurodiversity movement, which sociologist Judy Singer articulated in the 1990s with the concept of ‘neurodiversity’ – a movement away from seeing differences as flaws, and towards understanding them as variation. From a deficit-based perspective to a diversity-based perspective.
