If it's good enough for Cherie Blair...The Cygnet life-coaching and mentoring programme for adults with autism

In 2009, Research Autism organised and conducted a Collaborative Autism Research Forum entitled Successful Futures for Adults with Autism. At this meeting adults with a diagnosis of autism were invited to talk about the systems of support that were available to them or that they would find helpful.

There was a consensus among this group that the existing forms of social support were not meeting their needs. Whereas social groups enjoyed a mixed response, the majority of those attending expressed particularly negative feelings about befriending as something that had not been helpful to them. Some said it had been their parent’s idea. Others reported that befrienders had either lost interest or moved away. One young woman was distressed to discover that her befriender was paid expenses. Problems with matching meant either no befrienders were found or they were paired with people with whom they had little in common. A view was expressed that friendships around shared interests were perfectly achievable for many autistic people but that a befriending arrangement often lacked this and seemed fairly meaningless for both parties. Participants were at pains to point out that for some autistic people befriending might work well – just not for them. What was needed, it was suggested, was a life coach or mentor working on a time-limited basis to help achieve specific goals or address specific points of concern. As one delegate put it ‘Cherie Blair has one –why not me?’