Thanks to funding from the Scottish Government, we are delighted to announce plans to develop a new year-long peer mentoring project.

At a recent event held by the Scottish Women’s Autism Network (SWAN) it was emphasised that peer support and mentoring are highly valued by autistic women and girls.

This new project is being developed and delivered by Scottish Autism in partnership with SWAN. It will be autistic led and will involve engaging with autistic women and girls to construct a programme of experiential learning and training for mentors. Once mentors have been recruited they will be matched with a mentee for a set period.

The project is designed to enable women to identify personal goals and outcomes as well as accessing a range of mentoring, networking and personal development training. Through this we hope the project will enable autistic women in the building of: feelings of empowerment, identity, self-esteem, confidence, resilience and citizenship.

Speaking about the project, Dr Catriona Stewart, Autism Advisor at Scottish Autism said:

“This is a very exciting opportunity for us to formalise the kind of training and support that we have come to recognise many of the women who are involved with SWAN would benefit from. Peer-support is becoming increasingly regarded as a potentially highly valuable resource for autistic people, and mentoring as a means of encouraging and supporting individuals to reach their self-defined goals and their full potential within the business world. This project aims to combine these in an autistic-led programme of training and events.”