rvsurtees

Hi Florrie, i hope things are getting better for you now. it sounds to me like people are ignoring you because they are able to, so perhaps if J and K agreed you could get your local paper to print your story and embarass people into doing the jobs they were in employed to do? just a thought and perhaps not appropriate for your situation.

Hello again, Sorry if i've caused anyone any concern - it certainly wasn't my intention. Thank you so much for the info about the changes to judiciary, i'll check that out. I think maybe I didn't explain myself very well before so I'll attempt to do so now! I understand that what I'm doing is not just a theoretical piece of research and that I'm looking into issues that have serious impacts on real lives. The reason that I have chosen to go down the path of doing interviews with people with autism is because from the research I've done so far it seems that all research on autism is done by 'experts' for 'experts' but nobody seems to take the time to talk to anyone with any real experience of autism. Though perhaps that's not the case and I've just got the wrong impression. In regards to ethics, I'm studying at LSE and yes we have a very strict ethics code that we have to adhere to. And because I'm an undergraduate, any research I do is very carefully monitored by my tutors and any deviation from correct proceedure results in an automatic fail. The nature of the questionnaire will be divided into two sections, the first will regard the respondent's own point of view about why they were arrested and the second half would be about what happened after arrest - i.e penalities received if any, at what stage it was established that the person was autistic etc. I obviously wouldn't disclose the interviews to anyone and annonymity of any respondents is a requirement made by LSE in any pieces of research. I would also explain my thesis in much greater detail to anyone that was interested in participating. I hope that's cleared things up a bit. As I said in my first post, this is the first time I've used this forum so if I've been out of place or cause any offence I'm sorry. Rachel

hiya, i don't have autism or any children with autism but I'm a sociology student at the London School of Economics and I'm doing a course in health and medicine where there's a lot about ADHD and ritalin. so... i don't know anything about how it would interact with autism but this is what i do know about ritalin and ADHD: as usual the pharmaceutical industry has a lot to answer for they basically latched on to ADHD and created ritalin and now as a result diagnoses of ADHD have become absolutely ridiculous (1 in 5 boys in the US apparently have it). the effect it's having is that those that actually do have ADHD don't receive the proper care they need and those that don't are just put on drugs anyway. sorry i've gone off the point a bit... so as far as i know ritalin itself isn't a particularly dangerous drug (it has some side effects but on the whole they're not too severe) - it works a little like an aspirin in that you could take it when you need it and it works for that period of time (rather than requiring a whole course before it takes effect). it definitely does temporarily increase concentration levels but it does that for anybody regardless of anything else, so students have started taking it half an hour before exams and things like that. I don't know if that's at all helpful? Dr Ilina Singh has written a lot about it if you wanted to look her up?

Hello everyone this is my first time using this site, My name is Rachel and I'm a third year student studying at the London School of Economics (LSE). I'm currently trying to write a 10,000 word research project on autism in the penal system and was hoping for a little help / advice. My thinking is that there isn't enough awareness and consequently knowledge about disorders such as autism available at all levels of society. I've chosen to look at how the British police force are equipped to deal with autism because the consequences of being wrongly labelled a ciminal or 'deviant' or 'trouble maker' etc can be so severe. I intend to conduct a series of interviews and I really would like to include interviews with people with autism (diagnosed or not) who have some experience of contact with the police. So, if anyone has any experience of being arrested and then released either with a caution or no charge and would like to help me with my research or can advise me on a good way to proceed please email me. The interview would be quite short and would be in the form of an online questionnaire. r.v.surtees@lse.ac.uk Thanks!