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Community voice, Think Autism Sydney 2025
Care is a text that needs no reply, a Think Autism panel heard
In short
At Think Autism Sydney in May 2025, panellists argued that autistic community can live online and that care is defined by the people who give and receive it, in small, everyday acts.
Read it instead, 4 minutesThe transcript
The story
When a panel at Think Autism Sydney in May 2025 was asked what care looks like in the autistic community, and who gets to define it, one panellist answered with a list of small things. Care could be a text telling someone they do not have to reply straight away, sent only to let them know you are thinking of them. It could be a group chat, a shared spreadsheet, a voice note or a meme, or stimming together in a room, in silence, without judgement. Care, the panellist added, is “cancelling without guilt”. The people who define care, the panellist said, are the people giving and receiving it. That meant the autistic community itself.
None of the acts on that list requires a funding agreement, an assessment or a provider, and the panellist presented them as the substance of community. The host, Anita Aherne of Living on the Spectrum, called it one of the key takeaways of the panel that autistic people define what their community is, and should not be told what it ought to look like.
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Sources the story draws on
- Autism Online: A Review of How Autistic People Communicate Virtually (opens in a new tab), Drexel University (summary of Hassrick, Holmes, Walton, Sosnowy and Carley, Autism in Adulthood)
- Social media and cyber-bullying in autistic adults (opens in a new tab), Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 52(11), pp. 4966 to 4974 (Triantafyllopoulou, Clark-Hughes and Langdon)
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