Finding Neurodiversity in the Criminal Justice System, w/ Helen Arnold-Richardson | EDB 233

 

Do-IT Profiler’s Helen Arnold-Richardson discusses their work screening for neurodiversity in the justice system.

(23 minutes) Helen Arnold-Richardson is the Managing Director of Do-IT Solutions which developed the Do-IT Profiler: a screening tool used by over 25,000 people in prisons in the UK. She has a vast amount of knowledge and experience of supporting neurodiverse staff, children and adults in custody, having worked in a variety of roles within the Criminal and Youth Justice sector. The Do-IT team work with organizations by providing services and packages to support people who may be neurodivergent.

For more info: www.doitprofiler.com

 

 

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION


DR HACKIE REITMAN (HR):

Hi, I’m Dr. Hackie Reitman. Welcome to another episode of Exploring Different Brains. And today, we’re so lucky to have coming to us from all the way across the pond all the way from over there in Wales. We have Helen Arnold Richardson, who is one of the real champions of neurodiversity. When you hear everything she’s doing, Helen, welcome to different brains.

 

HELEN ARNOLD-RICHARDSON (HAR):

Thank you. Hi, Hackie. Great to be part of it.

 

HR:

Well, I love your accent, you know, you can say anything you want, it comes out sounding really good. I love that.

 

HAR:

And vice versa.

 

HR:

Well, mines a Jersey City accent we’re, we’re a little different.

 

HAR:

It’s pretty cool.

 

HR:

Well, why don’t you introduce yourself properly and tell us all the great stuff you’re doing with neurodiversity?

 

HAR:

Oh, so, as you said, right up with the introduction. I’m Helen Arnold Richardson. And I’m the managing director of Do-It Solutions. We provide a screening tool for neuro diverse traits, to be able to provide support and guidance to individuals on the mountain, their challenges, identifying their strengths, but then also for people working with them. So we work across various sectors. My particular sector that I’m interested in is is the criminal justice sector. So we do work with employers, schools, universities, and we’ve got some some customers over in the states as well, but it’s great. And, and we, as I said, we work in schools, apprenticeship providers, big winners, employers, and prisons and probation.

 

HR:

Well, you know, you’ve always been champion of the underdog, which I love about you. Tell us how specifically you got involved with the criminal justice system?

 

HAR:

Sure. So a bit of a history about me is that I, I embarked on my career of teaching and teaching law. And I was teaching law to people who want to be solicitors to be lawyers. And I really wanted to challenge so a job come up in a young offenders institution, which was for young men who were 18 to 22 years old, serving four years to life. So they had committed pretty heinous offenses to be admitted. And it was the that I saw the complexities of the the young people that I was working with, you know, don’t get me wrong. I’m not excusing what they’ve done but I could see the complex lives that they may have lived. And it was really that I come across the whole concept of neurodiversity and the difficulties that these young people were facing. Following on from that, I then went into the adult estate.

So I was an area manager managing in prisons for 18 plus. And then I ended up managing 13 prisons, the education in 13 prisons. And that’s where I come across the Do-It Profiler, because I was looking for something that will be able to support the people in custody, and also to be able to upskill my staff at the time as well, because we can’t all be specialists. But at the time, it was learning difficulties and disabilities, that was the terminology that was used, which is quite a deficit model, as you know, Hackie. And so it’s great to see, the changes are going on in the criminal justice system over here in the UK, where there is a big focus now on neurodiversity, and neurodivergent traits and looking at the strengths of individuals, not just the challenges that they have. And I think with what I’m seeing, and what I’m seeing now, from a data point of view, is the people in prison are, as I said, very complex. But what we’re seeing is that in a dataset, we’ve just been working with prisons, and looking at the data from the profiler of people in prison. And what we’re seeing is that a out of a dataset of 11,000 people one in four had been in foster care, which is a very high percentage of people who have been passed around the system hadn’t received the support that they required to be able to support them in new challenges. What we’ve also seen from that data set is about four out of five have been excluded. So this is really showing why we need to provide a whole person approach to supporting these people and being able to identify as I said, their strengths and their challenges and supporting their challenges and empowering them because so many of them have been missed, or misdiagnosed for loads and loads of different reasons.

 

HR:

Give us some numbers if you could, when we talk, for instance, I interviewed William Packard, who wrote on neurodiversity in the prison system and justice system, give us some numbers from your point of view over there, like, what are we talking about here?

 

HAR:

We’re talking about one in three Hackie. That’s what our data is showing one in three, which is, is it blows your mind, it blows your mind. And the other the other thing that we’re sort of noticing is that there’s this misconception that people coming in to present on probation, or use justice we work as well, is that people will come with a diagnosis. And they don’t, they do not come with a diagnosis. And there’s this disorder, middle group of people who keep on being missed. They’re going through the system, and they’re being missed constantly, as I said, they could have been in foster care. So moved from place to place not access and services, we’re seeing high levels of homelessness, I don’t know where it’s like in the US and UK, there’s high levels of homelessness, so they won’t get a referral because they haven’t got a GP. Another thing that we’re seeing, we’ve just published a piece of a colleague of mine, Professor Amanda Kirby, just just published a paper with some other colleagues looking at the differences in prison between male and female offenders, because obviously, female offenders exhibit symptoms very differently to that of male offenders. And there’s a lot of research going on in that area. Because they’re not coming with a diagnosis. They’re not being screened, not being identified. So they’re being left. And so as you said, I’m champion of the fact of the people say that we need to be able to provide support, but also to be able to identify their strengths. And that’s the bit I think that’s missing Hackie. It’s not focusing on the challenges and providing support for the challenges, but really saying, look at what you’re good at, because most of them have never even been told what they’re good at…

 

HR:

And that’s a natural segue to: to try to give them the tools for those that are going to get paroled and those that are going to get released. We’re setting them up for failure, because we’re not tuning in on their different brain to help to give them the tools they want to survive.

 

HAR:

They’ve never been given those tools. And I think that’s, that’s part of the missing link of the complex lives that they’ve lived is that if they weren’t given the tools could things have been different? We don’t know, we don’t know.

 

HR:

We don’t know. But what we do know is, is a little bit I’ll throw in a little plug for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Broward County here in South Florida. And if you go, for instance, to the hackie, reitman club, ask them to raise their hand, if you have two parents at home, nobody raises their hand. And even one parent, only about half of them, like you say foster parents, everything else. But if we intervene early to give them the coaching, we have a 90% high school graduation rate, for instance, you know, the problem with large organizations in general, I think, which may include the prison system is? Or maybe not, is they kind of don’t want to damage their brand by giving numbers to those of us with different brains. You know, how many are autistic? How many have dyslexia? How many have ADHD and we compare it to the general population, and the numbers are secured much higher?

 

HAR:

Absolutely, absolutely. I think you hit the nail on the head there as well, in the fact of what we’re seeing from the research is the high levels of colon clearance as well. So even though I’m seeing a lot of them are not diagnosed, if somebody does come with a de luces, the probability is they’re going to have traits associated with other conditions as well. So they could have ADHD traits. They could have dyspraxia DCD traits. So you know, it’s not it’s taken away from the silent approach, and doing a whole person approach and looking at other factors that could be responsible for the challenges as well.

 

HR:

Because none of these things occur in isolation. You can’t have autism without some degree of anxiety, a little bit of depression, and so on and so forth. You know…

 

HAR:

That’s, that’s sorry to cut you off Hackie. But I think that’s why we really need to move away from this siloed approach from this tick box approach. And you either have it or you don’t have it, let’s focus on the person in the context of their lives, to look at what we can do to support them to be able to achieve their goals going forward.

 

HR:

Yes, and which is why I think we have to start focusing on This is a discussion I had with Tim Goldstein, who you can look up at Timgoldstein.com. I love his term neurodistinct. And we were discussing the need for neurodistinct traits, attacking them, rather than, “diagnoses”. Okay? And that’s one reason I started Different Brains. When we started it was to get everything under one roof. Because as you said so eloquently, they’re in different silos. It’s all the same stuff, the same tools that you’re doing for those prisoners will help all of us, which is a segue into the profiler and the other actual tools. Tell us about the actual tools you’re using.

 

HAR:

Yeah, sure. So the profiler was developed by as, as my colleague, Professor Amanda Kirby many, many years ago. And it’s been tried and tested for over a decade, with 1000s and 1000s of data sets. And the tool itself, as I said, is not a diagnostic, it doesn’t say you have a tool, you don’t have it. What it does is it provides modules that the person does with accessibility features built in. So again, they haven’t got to ask for a colored overlay, or they haven’t got to ask for a question to be repeated all the questions and answers a voice. For those receptive language disorders, they could listen to the questions over and over and over again, which is what you wouldn’t get on a one to one conversation, short modules for those with attention difficulties, and they complete it. And the most important thing for us is that they get something at the end of it. So the report shows the strengths that they’ve got in those areas. But then when challenges are identified, then there’s practical strategies that they can use, whether it’s in prison, or whether it’s in employment, and then their strategies, then for the people working with them on the same on the different report about being inclusive, because I think that’s what’s key. It’s being inclusive of everybody and using these little strategies, quantities. And it’s only small things Hackie that, you know, you may not know about Small changes can make a massive difference to individuals.

 

HR:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Small steps, big journeys.

 

HAR:

Definitely,

 

HR:

How do people who are watching this right now, how do they learn more about all of these tools and stuff?

 

HAR:

See, so people can either email me directly at helen@doitprofiler.com, or go on our website, which is www.doitprofiler.com. There’s a vast amount of information on there. We also on LinkedIn, so check me out on there. And we also provide lots of resources and information for people who want to read up more on neurodiverse conditions and how to manage them. And again, pulling out the strengths of individuals and having those conversations.

 

HR:

How has the cooperation been from the powers that be with what you’re trying to accomplish in the prison system in Wales. So

 

HAR:

in Wales, it’s been very, very good, because that’s where it all started. And so we work in the majority of the prisons in Wales. Because they can see, they can see, it’s not just about the education and it being delivered in the education part of the prison, they see it as a whole prison approach. So the information goes on to the wings into the units. The inflammation goes down to health care for referrals for full assessments. And it’s also been impacting on custody, because as you said, earlier, Hackie, the link between neurodiversity and mental health is a big one. And what we’re seeing is that the impact of identifying these traits on things like risk of suicide, and self harming as well. So being able to sort of manage these conditions, and supporting these individuals, obviously decreases the risk of self harm and risk of suicide as well. So we’ve been really lucky in Wales with that, and working with as you said, the powers that be in relation to that. We’re also in the Scottish prisons as well. In 17 public sector prisons in Scotland and again, very strong relationship where they get it hacky, they understand, you know, the need to be able to identify the support needs of everybody and the strength and everybody that’s in the prison population.

 

HR:

I’ll tell you our differentbrains.org people, particularly our wonderful neurodivergent, trainees, and interns, we started a research pillar and we’re doing a couple of Papers, one on the effect of the Coronavirus times on what isn’t. And then another one on those with ADHD. What would be very interesting to me would be whether or not the COVID-19 Coronavirus time times have had any effect at all, on the prison population, because maybe their life doesn’t change a whole lot? I don’t know. I don’t know.

 

HAR:

It’s quite interesting you say that because it has, it has impacted on them. Because — from and this is my understanding from from anecdotal conversations that I’ve had with with people who were still in the prison service — is that prisoners have been locked up a lot longer because they haven’t been able to move, they haven’t been able to move around the prison as a result of. And I know that, you know, the prison service has been doing their best to be able to accommodate the needs in this current time.

 

HR:

Yeah, because now in essence, they’re each in solitary. And unless they get some technology in there with virtual learning and communication and zoom meetings, it’s not going to happen, that would be an interesting thing. Now, I’d like to bring up another point that was William Packard was very sophisticated in presenting when I interviewed him quite a while ago. The surprising thing to me was not so much the high incidence of neuro diversity in the prisoner population. But in the people who worked in prisons, also the guards and everyone else. Have you studied that as well?

 

HAR:

Absolutely. So we haven’t done a study with a lot. We work very closely with the trade union for the prison officers. And they use our tool from an employment point of view. Because as you said, there are quite high needs within the prison staff who work in the prisons as well. So I think, again, that’s when it comes to inclusive practice for all, not just the prisoners, that the officers were working in there as well. And that goes across all employment places in our

 

HR:

society in general. I think this is a welcoming atmosphere, definitely upfront about what you’re neurodiversity, with your mental health issues, what your different brain is doing, and try to, as you say, focus on the positives and…

 

HAR:

…and help the challenges. Yeah, definitely, definitely.

 

HR:

What is the biggest thing that the general public might not understand about what you’re doing?

 

HAR:

That’s a really good question. I think it’s understanding what neurodiversity is. Because if people understand, I think there’s a big education piece Hackie, which is why I love what you’re doing at differentbrains.org. Because I don’t there’s an education piece because people don’t understand what neurodiversity is. So I think what we’re seeing, especially with employers at the moment, is that we’re doing a lot of training, especially with COVID. on at the moment, we’re doing a lot of training, say on what your diversity is, giving strategies about how you can improve inclusive practice. And then that then moves them on to looking at the profiler, looking at how they could use that to be able to support their staff, or the participants or their learners, to really allow them to achieve their outcomes. So I think, you know, a lot of work is still got to be done to get people to understand what it is and the importance of it as well Hackie.

 

HR:

Have you been able to measure some of the impact and effect that these programs have had yet?

 

HAR:

From an anecdotal point of view? Yes, because for us, the impact and the outcomes is on an individual by individual basis. But from anecdotally, we’ve done focus groups from peer mentors within the prisons who have said about how the profiler has helped the men in the prisons. We’ve also had it from a lot of the staff, we’re using the profiler across justice system, and seeing about how it provides them with a baseline to will know how to work and support these individuals, who, again, have the strengths and challenges that can be acquainted to neurodiversity, whereas previously, there was nothing in place. They didn’t know about neurodiversity. They would only support those who came with a diagnosis coming back to what I was saying about those group in the middle who are constantly being missed. So we are seeing a very positive impact. With those companies that are using us, to, for them as an organization, but then also from people that are working with to be able to achieve their aspirations and goals, and get the best performance out of people as well.

 

HR:

Can you speak about some of the other leadership in your organization.

 

HAR:

Other leaders in my company. So I work with Professor Amanda Kirby, who is a colleague of mine, she’s, as I said, the founder and CEO. And she’s very, very passionate about neuro diversity, hence creating a profiler in the first instance. She’s published over 100 papers. She’s written several bugs. And she’s raising the market at the moment, which I’ve been very pleased to put a paragraph in as well. So she’s she was the one who created the DCD diagnostic for adults, as well. So she did that as part of her PhD.

 

HR:

Do you get any pushback from society over there that: why don’t you help us? Why are you helping the prison population? Why are you rewarding them? Do you get any of that?

 

HAR:

No I don’t get any of that, but… That’s quite an interesting question. Actually, the pushback that we’ve had in relation to profiler is, why would we want to use it to identify people, because if we identify people, then we’ve got to do something about it. And that is something that really gets my bank up. Because they’re not looking at the fact that people are there that needs support. And even if you don’t identify them, they are still there and require support. So whether it’s a funding issue, or they just don’t want to know, I’m not sure. But it is quite an interesting comment to make.

 

HR:

So Do It Solutions and Do It Profiler?

 

HAR:

Correct.

 

HR:

Okay. All right. Where are you? geographically? Like, what areas are you in now? And what areas are you contemplating going into?

 

HAR:

So we’re currently used across the UK. As I said previously, we’ve got some customers in the USA. I’m looking to explore further in the USA, which would be brilliant, aware of advance with universities building on the customers that we already have. But to be able to have a discussion with somebody in in the Correctional Services would be amazing and probation as well.

 

HR:

especially with the privatization that’s going on here and especially to take advantage of Coronavirus times where everything’s virtual.

 

HAR:

Exactly. Exactly. And we are in conversations with colleagues in in New Zealand and Australia as well.

 

HR:

Well, Helen Arnold Richardson, it’s been such a pleasure to have you with us today. Thank you so much for being here.

 

HAR:

You’re more than welcome Hackie. Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure.