|
This Week At NeuroHub Community
|
|
|
|
Everything happening at NeuroHub Community, with a twist!
|
That's right, we're now adding a Neurodiversity news section to our weekly email to keep you up to date on all the latest news in the world of neurodiversity!
It's been an intense time for NeuroHub staff over the last week, and many of us feel like we are running on fumes! That is part of the reason why we are starting a volunteer program, so that people who want to volunteer to support our work, can!
Anyway that's enough from me! Here is what you will find in the email!
David
1. This Week At NeuroHub Video
2. Coming Up This Week (Everything NeuroHub has coming up this week) & Featured Offerings & Events
3. Happening In NeuroHub Connect (Everything on offer in our Community space on the Heartbeat platform)
4. Neurodiversity News (News from the world of Neurodiversity)
5. Other Important Things
|
|
|
Event's and Meet Up's That Might Interest You
Joe Lenton: Building Our Resilience Session 3
Seession 3 of Joe Lenton's course is happening this week, tickets are no longer available, but if you're signed up, make sure to be there!
Supporting Autistic People Part 2
Part 2 of our Supporting Autistic People course is happening on Friday 25th of September at 6pm BST. If you haven't registered yet, register now because spaces are limited and you only have three more days until ticket sales stop. We are currently offering 20% off General Admission tickets AND a "Pay What You Can Afford" Ticket. Buying Part 2 gives you automatic free access to part 1!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Featured
Two New Books!
We have written two new books, they are the reports on our "Autistic Language Survey 2026", and a more in depth report on all the data we have gathered since 2024. The one looking specifically at 2026 is also available as a free PDF as we felt that was only ethical to the people who took part, but both books are also available in paperback and Kindle format for £9.99 Click the images below to view on amazon, and the button beneath those will allow you to download the free PDF from our community resources section of NeuroHub Connect (even if your not a member).
|
|
|
|
Embracing Our Autistic Selves Audio Course! AND A Neurodivergent Guide To The Mental Health Act!
We still have our audio course version of the Embracing Our Autistic Selves Course available on our Ko-Fi shop alongside other low price offerings. You can download the whole course for £10 (or more if you wish to donate further). The whole Audio course should take no more than an hour to listen to and is split into an introduction +three main parts.
We also have our Neurodivergent Guide to The Mental Health Act in England, full of information on everything important you need to know about Englands Mental Health act and how it relates to neurodivergence. It is available to download again for a minimum donation of £12.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Happening In NeuroHub Connect
|
NeuroHub Connect is our online community run on the Heartbeat app where neurodivergent people and their allies can connect, form community, and engage in mutual peer-based support. Below are all the things accessible via the platform and how to join.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Community-Connection Sessions
These happen three times a week on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday, and are a space for the community to come together on zoom and just enjoy the company and discussion with other Neurodivergent people.
|
Mindfully Divergent Peer-Support Session
The day's for these alternate weekly between Tuesday and Wednesday, this week this structured peer-support session with mindfulness will be occurring on Tuesday at 6pm
|
Neurodivergent Jounalling Club
Every Thursday at 4pm BST Emma Whalley facilitate's our Neurodivergent Journalling Club that has had some marvelous feedback and proven to be one of our most popular sessions!
|
|
|
|
Dungeons & Dragons Group
We are now running a fortnightly D&D group. Our first cammpaign starts in two weeks, so sign up now so we can help you get set up and ready to play! We only have 7 player spots left so sign up now in order to get access!
|
|
|
|
|
Professional Gateway Membership
Membership to our Professional Gateway Community, a community specifically for neurodivergent professionals, and professionals working with neurodivergent people, is slowly growing, click the button below to join and access over £250 worth of free resources as well as our community discord and monthly peer suppor/professional supervision sessions
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Neurodiversity News!
|
The latest news in the world of neurodiversity!
|
|
|
|
|
Scotland shelves the LDAN Bill
|
| |
|
On 8–9 September the Scottish Government confirmed it will not proceed with the Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodivergence Bill. Maree Todd's reasoning was that legislation would take years and the government wants faster practical change — pointing instead to neurodevelopmental support, health checks, the Coming Home Action Plan and Changing Places Toilets. On 11 September a coalition including National Autistic Society Scotland and Scottish Autism issued a joint statement calling it deeply disappointing: no mandatory public-sector training, no statutory duty to publish a strategy, and no national plan at all now that the previous strategies expired in 2021. Scottish Autism said:
"Given the time, effort and energy so many people invested, it is extremely disheartening and demoralising to see no legislative outcome from that work. Many people were already sceptical of whether their involvement would deliver real and meaningful change, and the Scottish Government will now need to work hard to rebuild trust and demonstrate that the voices of autistic people continue to shape policy and decision-making."
In addition/, National Autistic Society Scotland said the following:
"We are particularly dismayed that two pillars of the Bill – mandatory training in the public sector and requirements for national and local government to publish strategies – are completely absent from the Scottish Government's plans."
Whichever way we look at it, we at NeuroHub Community see this as a huge blow to the neurodivergent community of Scotland, and will actively look for opportunities to support the restoration of this situation
|
|
|
|
Autistic Inclusive Meets & NeuroHub Community Deliver Petition Against Kerri Rivera "The Bleach Queen" To Downing Street
|
On September 18th Autistic Inclusive Meets (AIM) Support by NeuroHub Community delivered a petition with over 38,000 signatures to 10 Downing Street asking the UK government to step in and protect Autistic children and young people from the abuse of Chlorine Dioxide "treatment" as proposed and published by Kerri Rivera, a real estate agent turned homeopathy practitioner.
Chlorine Dioxide is a powerful bleaching agent used in industry to purify drinking water. Here is some information about it's regulations for water purification:
The US EPA sets a Maximum Residual Disinfectant Level for chlorine dioxide of 0.8 mg/L, with a separate chlorite MCL of 1.0 mg/L. WHO declines to set a guideline value for chlorine dioxide itself because it degrades rapidly to chlorite, and instead sets a provisional guideline of 0.7 mg/L for chlorite and 0.7 mg/L for chlorate; WHO notes that at typical final-disinfectant doses the resulting chlorite concentration is normally below 0.2 mg/L.
So per 100 litres: 80 mg of chlorine dioxide at the EPA regulatory ceiling, and realistically rather less in practice.
Kerri Rivera instructs parents to give there children inexcess of 15 "drops" to drink a day, and also advises that children are given enemas of the chlorine dioxide solution.
Why "drops" is a trap
Milligrams per litre is a concentration, not a volume, so it cannot be converted into drops without you nominating a solution strength. Worse, municipal plants do not dose by dropper at all; chlorine dioxide is generated on site and metered in as a dissolved gas. If you write "water companies use X drops per 100 litres" a hostile reader will correctly say you have invented a unit. The pharmaceutical standard drop, for reference, is 0.05 mL, ie; 20 drops per millilitre, though real droppers vary considerably.
If you want the drop figure anyway, anchored to a common 3,000 ppm stabilised stock solution: one 0.05 mL drop contains 0.15 mg of chlorine dioxide, so you would need roughly 530 drops to reach 80 mg in 100 litres. Put the other way, a single drop of that stock in 100 litres yields 0.0015 mg/L, about one five-hundredth of the EPA ceiling.
The oral dose
Sixteen drops at the pharmaceutical standard of 0.05 mL is 0.8 mL of concentrate. At the two strengths MMS is typically sold at, that is 179 mg (22.4%) or 224 mg (28%) of sodium chlorite per day. Sodium chlorite is 74.6% chlorite ion by mass, so in the currency the safety limits are actually written in, that is 134 to 167 mg of chlorite ion daily.
WHO's tolerable daily intake for chlorite is 0.03 mg/kg of body weight, derived from a NOAEL of 2.9 mg/kg/day in a two-generation rat study with an uncertainty factor of 100. Against that benchmark, using the 28% figure:
- a 14 kg child (roughly three years old): 11.9 mg/kg/day, about 400 times the TDI
- a 20 kg child (roughly six): 8.4 mg/kg/day, about 280 times the TDI
- a 32 kg child (roughly ten): 5.2 mg/kg/day, about 174 times the TDI
At 22.4% the multiples are 318, 223 and 139 respectively. Even the most conservative combination on that table, an older child on the weaker product, is delivering well over a hundred times the internationally accepted daily limit, every day. Over a month a 20 kg child on 16 drops of 28% has swallowed roughly 6.7 g of sodium chlorite.
Note that chlorine dioxide does not escape this accounting. WHO's position is that ingested chlorine dioxide converts rapidly to chlorite in the body, which is precisely why they set no separate guideline value for it and rely on the chlorite figure instead. "It's chlorine dioxide, not bleach" is therefore not a defence; it is the same toxicological endpoint by a different route.
What that actually does
The mechanism is oxidative. WHO describes the primary and most consistent effect of chlorite exposure as oxidative stress producing changes in red blood cells. Clinically this presents as methaemoglobinaemia, where haemoglobin is oxidised into a form that cannot carry oxygen, together with haemolysis, and then acute kidney injury as the kidneys are overwhelmed by the products of destroyed red cells. There is also direct corrosive injury to the gastrointestinal tract, which is what produces the severe vomiting and diarrhoea that proponents reframe as "detox".
This is documented in children, not merely extrapolated from animals. A published case series describes two brothers aged eight and nine who ingested a small quantity of undiluted 22.4% sodium chlorite. The older boy's oxygen saturation fell to 71% despite high-flow oxygen, his blood ran dark, and he developed methaemoglobinaemia, haemolytic anaemia requiring transfusion, and renal failure requiring dialysis. Treatment included methylene blue and renal replacement therapy. That was an acute accidental exposure, and it is the clearest available answer to anyone who claims the dose is trivial.
The enemas
Rectal administration is in several respects the worse of the two. It puts an oxidising agent into direct, prolonged contact with colonic mucosa, producing chemical colitis, mucosal ulceration and sloughing, with fluid and electrolyte disturbance on top; in a small child the absorbed fraction is not negligible either. Repeated administration compounds it.
The critical point here is what the shedding is interpreted as. Parents observe long strands of tissue passed after these enemas and identify them as "rope worms", promoted within these communities as expelled parasites and photographed as proof the protocol is working. They are not parasites. They are strips of damaged intestinal epithelium and bowel content. The visible evidence that persuades a parent to continue is the injury itself. That is the single most damning detail available to any of us, and it highlihgts a loop of deadly harm that in part justifies why NeuroHub Community takes an anti-behaviourist approach to supporting Autistic people: a protocol that manufactures its own confirmatory evidence out of a child's gut lining.
It also means that escalation is built in. Injury produces casts, casts read as parasites, parasites justify more dosing.
NeuroHub Community actively supports the campaign against Keri Rivera and is currelt y producing a YouTube documentary on the topic. So please watch this space for more information on that project. In the mean time, you can read more of NeuroHub's writing on the topic by clicking below.
|
|
|
|
|
|
NAS publishes "Autism is genetic"
|
| |
|
A review of 83 papers, explicitly framed as a response to misinformation in UK and US media and politics. Headlines: autism is genetic and lifelong, thousands of genes rather than one, genetic testing can't diagnose or predict it. What's interesting for your audience is the consultation underneath it — 300 autistic people and family members, 64% thought it would help counter myths, but many flagged parental guilt, and autistic respondents said they'd rather research money went to their actual needs than to genetics or cure work.
The National Autistic Society noted:
"...many expressed concern that this could lead to parental guilt or blame, even though no one controls the genes you get from your parents – it is the same way you get your hair or eye colour. After decades of prejudice and stigma, how could they not be concerned?"
They went further to say:
"Autistic people and their families want future research to focus on the priorities of autistic people, rather than 'treatments’ or ‘cures’. There is no ‘cure’ for autism and most autistic people (and many others) believe there is no need for a cure or for any kind of therapy to ‘treat’ autism. This does not mean that autistic people do not face challenges, but with the right support in place, they can live fulfilling and happy lives. Many autistic people and families also want to make sure that the positive aspects of autism and the strengths it brings - for some individuals and for society - are emphasised."
While NeuroHub Community is not directly affiliated or associated with National Autistic Society, we can not deny that this is important information to have. However, we support and advocate for the Autistic community on the point that there needs to be less focus on what causes autism, and a much greater focus on improving our quality of life. We're here, we don't care why, we just want happy and healthy lives.
|
|
|
|
|
Washington: A Diagnostic Initiative Announced From An Anti-Vaccine Platform
|
On 17 September, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced SPECTRA (Systems for Phenotypic Evaluation, Clinical Trajectories, Response, and Agency), a research programme to be administered through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Its stated purpose is to speed up autism assessment and to determine which interventions suit which children. ARPA-H will solicit "solutions" from external organisations. No funding figure was attached to the announcement, though it follows the Autism Data Science Initiative's award of $50 million across thirteen NIH projects in June.
The venue is not incidental to the story. Kennedy delivered the announcement as a keynote at a one-day Children's Health Defense conference in Washington DC; CHD is the anti-vaccine organisation he led before taking office. In the same address he repeated claims that vaccines are inadequately tested and that thimerosal has caused brain injury in children, both of which were fact-checked and rejected within twenty-four hours. A diagnostic research programme with real budgetary consequences was therefore launched from a stage whose purpose was to rehearse a discredited aetiology. STAT reported that during the keynote Kennedy described autistic children as "damaged".
Placed alongside three other developments this quarter, the direction of travel becomes legible. August's executive order narrowed the recommended childhood vaccine schedule to eleven diseases and commissioned a study of vaccine timing. The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee adopted a 2026 to 2028 strategic plan organised substantially around profound autism. And on 31 August the Department of Justice joined states in Texas v. Kennedy, seeking the removal of community-integration language from the Section 504 regulations; that is, seeking to weaken the statutory expectation that disabled people live in the community rather than in segregated settings.
What connects them is a conception of autism as pathology to be resolved rather than as a population owed rights. SPECTRA's vocabulary makes this explicit: phenotypic evaluation; clinical trajectories; response. These are the categories of a disease model, and the promise to identify "which interventions work" arrives without any account of what autistic people themselves want intervened upon. It is worth noting that when the National Autistic Society consulted three hundred autistic people and family members this month, respondents were clear that research funding should address their actual needs rather than genetics or cure. Nobody appears to have asked the equivalent question in Washington. Faster diagnosis is a legitimate goal, and waiting lists are a genuine injustice on both sides of the Atlantic; but diagnosis accelerated in order to feed an intervention pipeline is not the same good as diagnosis that unlocks support and self-understanding.
For UK readers the relevance is not merely that American policy is distressing to watch. Section 504 litigation tests the same principle our own community-living commitments rest on; the IACC's turn towards profound autism will shape which questions attract international research funding; and the misinformation Kennedy platforms crosses the Atlantic intact, which is precisely why the National Autistic Society felt obliged to publish a review of eighty-three papers restating that autism is genetic. When the largest research funder in the world takes its cues from a movement organised around blame, the effects reach our commissioning, our evidence base and our clients' families soon enough.
|
|
|
|
England: two SEND consultations closed on 18 September
|
Two Department for Education consultations flowing from February's schools white paper closed at 11:59pm on 18 September, having opened on 10 July. The first concerns education otherwise than at school; the second proposes an "upfront funding" model for mainstream schools built around a local SEND inclusion formula. Neither attracted much coverage outside the sector press, which is itself worth noting: consultations run across the summer holidays, closing in the second week of the new school year, are not designed to maximise responses from parents who spent August managing a child without provision.
The EOTAS proposals are the more consequential of the two for autistic children, because they touch a route that exists precisely for those whom school has failed. The consultation offers two models: local authorities naming a specialist school to hold and commission EOTAS arrangements; or schools themselves deciding whether EOTAS is needed and commissioning it with limited local authority oversight. Special Needs Jungle's analysis identifies the change that matters most, namely that parents would no longer be able to appeal to the Tribunal specifically on whether a child should receive EOTAS arrangements. Reintegration into school or further education runs through the document as the desired outcome, with regular review of whether a child should return. For a child who is out of school because school itself produced the harm, an arrangement whose stated purpose is returning them to it is not provision; it is a holding pattern with a destination already chosen for them.
The funding consultation is quieter but structurally significant. It would route high-needs money directly to mainstream schools and trusts rather than holding it centrally with the local authority, from April 2027, with each participating authority designing its own allocation method; the existing expectation that schools meet the first £6,000 of a pupil's support costs would rise. Special Needs Jungle's objections are worth carrying: the total is not increased, only divided differently; special schools depend entirely on the high needs block and risk being starved as money is diverted to mainstream settings; there is no published data on current mainstream SEND spending against which to judge any of it; and the accountability measures remain undeveloped, with a real risk that effectiveness gets proxied by a falling number of EHCPs rather than by whether children are actually supported. A system that measures its own success by how few statutory plans it issues has an obvious incentive, and it is not inclusion.
Set against that, the timeline is the detail that consistently gets lost, and it deserves restating every time this subject comes up. The white paper was published on 23 February 2026. Its main consultation closed on 18 May; the government has still not responded. The reformed system requires primary legislation and is not expected to commence until September 2029, with changes to EHCP support no earlier than September 2030. A child starting Year 4 this month will be sitting GCSEs before the system that is supposed to support them exists. Meanwhile the preparatory funding and the structural changes to EOTAS and to mainstream funding proceed now, on the administrative track, without waiting for the legislation that would carry the rights.
That is the whole story, and it is the same pattern visible in Scotland's decision to shelve the LDAN Bill. What arrives quickly is the part that reorganises money and narrows access; what is deferred to the next decade is the part that would create enforceable entitlement. Statutory rights are slow because they are binding, and administrative reform is fast because it is not. The consultation window has shut. The argument has not.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Autistic Mental Health Conference 2026 On-Demand
Thanks to the consent of our speakers we are able to offer nearly all of our conference presentations as an on-demand package for people who didn't get a ticket. They are split into Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3, and currently 50% off meaning that you only pay £30 for each bundle. Click below to access these bundles and explore the presentations that you want to, in your own time.
|
|
|
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
Autistic Mental Health Conference 2026 - On Demand Recordings
|
| |
|
Autistic Mental Health Conference 2026 — On-Demand Recordings Missed the Autistic Mental Health Conference 2026, or want to revisit some of the talks? Our on-demand conference recordings give you the opportunity to watch selected presentations from all three days of the conference, whenever it suits you. We have divided the recordings into three convenient bundles, so you can choose the conference content that interests you most. Each bundle brings together selected presentations from the relevant conference day, along with bonus pre-recorded sessions that were not shown during the live event. Watch in your own time, pause when you need to, and return to the sessions whenever you want. Whether you are an Autistic person exploring your own mental health, a practitioner looking for more appropriate approaches, or a professional seeking alternatives to traditional behaviourist models, these recordings offer valuable perspectives from Autistic speakers and advocates. Day 1 Bundle The first day of the Second Annual Autistic Mental Health Conference, Friday 14th August 2026, brought together Autistic practitioners, researchers and community advocates to explore mental health on Autistic terms. With the Day 1 Bundle, you can access selected presentations from the first day and watch them at your own pace. In addition, the bundle includes bonus pre-recorded sessions from speakers whose presentations were not aired during the live conference.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
New Podcast Series Is Coming To NeuroHub Community
|
|
|
|
Not only is the new series podcast coming, it is going to be livestreamed and live recorded. Episodes are scripted, but there will be time for discussion after the scripted part of the podcast is sorted. It is called A Multitude Of Drops.
A Multitude of Drops: Philosophies of Autistic Identity
Autism is an abstract concept, constructed to facilitate the medicalisation of Autistic experience. Autistic identity is the tangible, observable thing that was there all along.
I've been working on a new limited podcast series; six solo essays on what Autistic identity actually is when you stop letting the diagnostic manuals define it. Over six episodes I argue that identity is not a fixed property of a person but a perpetual becoming: constituted in our relationships with one another, damaged by hostile ecosystems, transmitted between us, and extending beyond both the bodymind and the lifetime.
It covers how a person comes to an Autistic identity and why nobody does it alone; what happens to identity in environments that will not permit it, including schools, services, wards and recovery spaces; what we do to each other inside our own community, which is the episode I put off writing; and where an Autistic identity actually ends, which I don't think is at the edge of your body.
Every drop is almost nothing. The ocean is itself a multitude of drops.
Six episodes, launching soon on all major platforms, with a companion essay here alongside each one. Completely free, donations appreciated though.
Starts September 23rd With A Live Recording Across Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, And Instagram, The Youtube Is Below If You Want To Click For A Reminder.
|
|
|
 |
Live podcast A Multitude Of Drops: Philosophies Of Autistic Identity Join us live on YouTube. Bring a question, or just listen with the chat off — both are welcome. |
|
|
Tap the bell marked Notify me on the YouTube page and it will tell you the moment we go live. |
|
|
Can't see the buttons? Watch at youtube.com/watch?v=vyAyba-01Bw
Or subscribe to the channel so you don't miss the next one. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our Ko-Fi Content
|
You can purchase content or donate to us on Ko-Fi to support us finacially, or simply just drop us a follow to helo our visibility! Here are some of the things you can access through Ko-Fi.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
