Brian Irvine, researcher at Centre for Research in Autism and Education (CRAE), University of London, and doctoral candidate at Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER), University of Birmingham, shares a framework for approaching Specialist (Autism) Mentoring in UK Higher Education.

Over the last two decades there has been a remarkable growth in the number of autistic students at university. From just 80 disclosures in the whole of the UK in 2003, now more than 16,500 autistic undergraduates and 1500 postgraduates find a place to belong in our universities (HESA, 2021).  

The UK has a ‘gem’ of a policy that is Disabled Students Allowance (Cochrane and Holmes, 2022).  When applying for student finance, students can tick a box to start the paperwork rolling for this DSA.  Once some quite tedious forms have been completed the students, or prospective students, meet with a Needs Assessor.  For autistic students, one of the key provisions that is allocated is the collaborative and holistic support that takes the shape of a Specialist (Autism) Mentor (MacLeod and Green, 2009). These are specialist well-being workers that operate either out of, or alongside, universities with a mandate to remove barriers to learning.  Most meet with their students for an hour’s chat once or twice a week.

Over the last decade or so, good practice has emerged from this provision.  Worldwide, there has been some 250 academic articles and papers written about the autistic experience with 70 or so magnifying the autistic voice (Irvine and MacLeod, 2022), but as yet there has been little time devoted to the role and practice of Specialist (Autism) Mentors… until now.

In 2019, just before the pandemic hit, I was pondering how other specialist autism mentors fullfilled their roles. I had developed my own way of mentoring over the last decade but it is a woefully woolly concept, and so looking outside of my own practice was delving into the unknown. Fortunately, my experience during my Masters dissertation (in which autistic students took the lead on the analysis of my redacted mentoring logs) had shown me the power of participatory research. There is a joy in the negotiation of shared working, particularly as someone whose own thought processes sit at odds with the majority.  

I called upon some autistic hypothesises to set me in the right direction. The students submitted questions such as:

• ‘Do you take a one size fits all approach?’ 
• ‘Do you actually understand us, or just listen?’.

These questions started the collecting of a year’s-worth of diary reflections from mentors. These half-termly online diaries were kept by 14 mentees and 29 mentors.

The diaries required thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2021), but to avoid imposing too much of my own thinking on the data I gathered some “master mentors” to assist. These five mentors became the Master Mentor Forum… and the best bit was - it was an autistic majority forum.  

In the diaries, there were stories of mentors going above and beyond in their weekly meetings.  They talked about:

• creating spaces of safety, in which students did not always have to feel as if they were coping; 
• connecting students with local non-university groups to support their interests; 
• adapting with the ever-changing role, in which two students never have identical needs. 

They were the professional optimists, knowing how universities worked, and how they could, or should work.

One finding of note was that a third of mentors in the study were autistic themselves, and a higher proportion of these were also the mentors recording exceptional practice.  

The forum critiqued early drafts of the analysis, and met in small groups over zoom to discuss what these findings meant. What emerged from a process of framing and reframing thinking, were three themes as follows:

Naming joys and injustices

Diaries spoke of autistic people naming the oddities and strangeness of universities.  Mentees found solace in being able to speak of and reframe both the joys and the heavy weariness that comes with being a student in large institutions. Mentors could challenge normative standards, and internalised stigmas could gently be explored. In both distancing themselves from institutional silliness, and engaging themselves in institutional advocacy, the double empathy problems that students were experiencing could be discussed and dissected with their mentors.

Building workarounds 

After establishing a trusting relationship in the mentoring room, a second theme could be identified. This was in working out the “workarounds”. At times this would be through considering how university-wide relationships might develop - the mentor providing a space to talk through the connections and frustrations with tutors, flatmates, significant others and parents-at-a-distance.  Alternatively this mentoring may take the shape of co-creating strategies or sharing those that had helped other students.  Together mentee and mentor together find ways of both surviving and thriving in higher education.

Contagious optimism 

Lastly, it was evident that mentors have a key role in having students’ backs.  An attitude that “everything could be sorted” along with an unconditional positive regard for their mentee provides a moment in the week in which a student can re-gather, re-stock and re-engage.  This is not pom-pom-wielding-everything-is-brilliant mentoring. This is having a deep and enduring relationship in which the student in their entirety can be known.

For those sociologists among you, you may notice that the numbered steps above describe a diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational model seen in social movements like the Suffragettes or Extinction Rebellion. Perhaps this is what mentees and mentors are doing. They are growing communities grounded in the Neurodiversity Movement within our institutions of learning… and that is quite brilliant.