Episode 10 - Jon talks about Oliver McGowan Training and his Manchester Marathon fundraising for AWP

Jon is back on the sofa, this time talking about his role as a Facilitating Trainer with AWP for The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training with AWP and the help and support given to the Co-Trainers with Lived Experience by AWP to ensure their wellbeing is given priority. He also talks about the Manchester Marathon fundraising he is doing with his fellow runners on April 19th 2026. We also discover what 2027's fundraiser might be including dressing up as a horse for it! 🤫🤭

Tune in to find out more

On 19 April, Jon and a few comrades are running the Manchester Marathon—not because he enjoys suffering (debatable), but to help raise awareness and quietly cause good trouble with Autism Wellbeing Project CIC. It’s his preferred method of advocacy: put the work in, start conversations, and push for a more humane, inclusive autism world—one mile at a time.

https://www.paypal.com/donate?campaign_id=6YZYR4JLRVBF8

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Oh, we did it in unison. I was gonna say it looked like a GCSC drop.

SPEAKER_02 0:16

We like a handsome deck or some sort of it.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

We never know.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

I think you're dead. Right, you ready, everyone? Okay. We're three, two, one. Action. Thank you. Oh, I love that. It's better than this one. Hello everyone, how are you doing? And welcome to the AWP podcast. My name's Stephen Jay Hollering. I am your host with the most and welcome back. Or if this is your first time here, then come join us. We're doing so many great interviews, haven't we? Well, you haven't. You've been behind the camera, but I'll introduce you in just a second. So if this is your first time here, then where have you been? Loads of great content coming through about autism, neurodiversions, and all sorts with the autism wellbeing project. So if you want to get involved, actually, then link if you can see on the camera is the autism wellbeing podcast at gmail.com. But if we're in your ears, then it's all in the description right there. So just click on the link and follow that trail down into the suburbs of our land. So it's good to have you here. And today it's a very good topic, isn't it? It is an excellent topic. Joining me again, I don't know what the schedule is, but this is your second time at time recording. You know, you did say you're gonna get the book. You're gonna be back on, aren't you? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

So for those who don't know, uh introduce yourself. I'm John, I work with AWP. I'm what's called an associate therapist. So I pick up therapy work for clients that AWP bring in, and I'm also an Oliver McGowan trainer, and that's I think what we're gonna talk about.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Yeah, and link in the description for the previous podcast that John debuted on, you know, in front of the camera, not behind, because you're a very good producer as well, aren't you? You push all those buttons, don't you? I'm a good button pusher. But anyway, so as customary, as built into the format of this podcast, we have a joke at this point just to break the ice. And I assume you've done your job and brought one with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Of course I have, yeah. So my joke is I only actually know 25 letters of the alphabet. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Well done. All this one.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

That's enough. Like a full Hollywood handshake. I I do have a second one. The ceiling isn't my favourite part of this room, but it's definitely up there.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

Oh I like that one as well. I I like the Y one better. Oh, shake. Well, I hope you enjoyed that at home. If you've got some jokes and submit them through the email, put in the subject matter, jokes. Contributions are all welcome. This is about a particular episode today because we're talking about training, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Uh Oliver McGowan training in particular. So if you want to go into briefly what the Oliver McGowan training is and what its association is with AWS.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

So Oliver McGowan training is mandatory training for the NHS and is also any social care, social work staff, anybody interacting or likely to interact with somebody who is autistic or has a learning disability. I think we agreed off camera that we won't go through Oliver's story. If you want to know about Oliver's story, then that's readily available on the on the internet. We're focusing more on the delivery of the training today and the purpose behind it. So part of the requisites for the training are that we always have an expert by experience on the training with us. So for a long time, training of this type has gone out and been delivered in workplaces, etc. And people who are the most informed and aware about the need for the training are those with lived experience. And so a compulsory part of the Oliver McGowan training is that we have an expert by experience with us for both sessions. So we'll have learning disability experts with us in the mornings, and then an autistic expert by experience in the afternoons. And as we go through the training, my job of the facilitating trainer is to coax experiences out of the experts, share them with the professionals we've got in front of us. And the idea is then that the professionals can understand firsthand what that experience was like for the individual that's doing the talking. So it's less from a theoretical academic perspective, it's more from the, well, this person actually experienced that. Absolutely. This was the treatment they received, this was how they found or struggled with what happened, or even relished and thrived and did well with the experience they had. It's not always all negative aspect. So there are positive stories come out of the training.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

It's fascinating when you sit in that room because I'd shadowed once a steel bind, and these smart people in the room all crowding around him to say, What is your experience? It's so valuable to them in ways you don't really realize if you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

And I think to hear it from somebody who's had that experience, and they can put their settings, they understand of what their waiting rooms are like, what their clinical rooms are like, or what that experience might be, and then to see it, hear about it from somebody else is that refresh that we all need. We all take things for granted, we all go into auto drive, we all relax into our jobs, I guess. And somebody coming on with a fresh perspective and going, actually, I struggle with that. That's not so great for me. And sometimes it's the first time these guys have heard this.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

So exactly, and coming from another angle is that as a presenter, as I'm doing right now, it takes a lot of energy and a lot of experience to do that. When people do start the training, do they start from a place of how did you start? Because it takes a certain kind of person to do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:46

It does, yeah. And it's I guess it's a bit of an antithesis, really, isn't it? This idea of we've got autistic experts by experience, and we've got the stereotype of autistic people not wanting to stand up and talk in front of everybody. So yeah, and we've worked with the experts and talked to them about how to deliver training and what's required of them. Nobody is expected to do anything that they're uncomfortable with. Yeah. And their stories can, some of their experiences, they can on one day be more than happy to deliver, and on another day when perhaps they're struggling a little bit, not so comfortable to deliver. And I guess it's the job of the facilitating trainer to pick up on that and be aware of that. So nobody's kind of pushed out front and left on their own. There's very much we've got that support there. It is, I would say it's a double act. The value is in listening to the expert, the person who's actually been on that journey. And then the professionals can actually trust what's being said, you know, that this happened to me, this was my experience. And they'll be able to hear certain things in the story, and you can see the reflection going on in the room. I'm like, I think actually we do that.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah, I think yes, like we are guilty of that.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

I mean, it's it's it's that connection from A to B, connecting the dots of theoretical to the practical. Yeah, you know, people light and not go, ah, that's what that means, because you know, without that experience, it doesn't know and it'll help me.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

And we've got we we've now done some work with the we've got like AE consultants in there, we've got pediatric consultants, clinical psychologists, we've got people who are experts in their fields and they excel at the work they do. And that's not we're not there to tell them you are wrong, you are to do it differently. We're there to just say what you offer is brilliant, fabulous, thanks. But do you know that these guys won't pick up the phone to make an appointment? So it would be great to get this person in front of you so that you can do your job efficiently and well, but the room is too bright, it stinks. Yeah, you know, and you might think, oh, it smells lovely and clean, yeah, but that smells overpowering for somebody who's got sensory difficulties with that smell. And it's that insight and that understanding that so this clinical interaction that you're gonna have with somebody instead of taking 15 minutes is now gonna take 40 minutes because they're dysregulated. Yeah, think about that.

SPEAKER_02 7:59

And also tone, he guess tone that he speaks here as well, needs to be a bit different and yeah, coordinated and individuals because again, a lot of the uh stereotype is that we're all the same.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

One of the points that we make is we've got an expert there, and that expert will very clearly say, I am not speaking for every single autistic person in the world. That's why I can't do that. And there's a there's a part of the course where we absolutely say, like, I can't give you a sheet of paper that says every time you get a flag on your system that says this person is autistic, right? You now need to do X, Y, and Z. I haven't we haven't got that. You can't make that. But what we can do is we can give you some pointers in the right direction, you can listen to this individual's experience and go, all right, okay. So somebody else might be impacted in the same way.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

And even that's a skill set in its own right, assessing people's needs, isn't it? Yeah, as you do engineering therapy as well. Yeah, absolutely. Um so talk us through the stages. So let's say I wanted to come in and hi, I want to do what playing the training as an expert, or do you want to buy the training?

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Oh, well, you can buy the training as well.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Yeah, so let's say as an individual with lived experience, yeah. Well, I'm not sure I'm scared and nervous. Okay, where do you start the journey?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Fabulous. Love that you're scared and nervous. That's great. We can work with you and we can support that. We'll get you to shadow somebody and see if it is actually what you want to do. A lot of the time, what we're finding is that we're overcoming the nervousness by people understanding that their experience has value. So the impact that your experience can have on somebody will be life-changing, not for the person in the room, although it will be for the consultant sat in the room as well, but there's a whole train of people sat behind that consultant, and they're all that consultant's patients. That's how I imagine it anyway. Then if you think, well, if I impact on that person, that impacts on them and impacts on them and impacts on them. And so we've got the chain down there. But when one of the experts feels that weight and understands, like, hang on a minute, you know, this is my story as this massive value. Some of that shyness, some of that worry, some of the insecurity, yeah, that goes by the wayside because it's the drive to tell the story that just pushes that to the back. Interesting. And I've said with the support is there, nobody ever goes out alone, nobody's ever expected to deal with any of the delegates and stuff. We're there for that.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

So, like, we're the bouncer, we make sure everything's alright. You come on as the celebrity, and we allow you to perform in that. But you can contact AWP if you're autistic, you have a learning disability. If you want to contact AWP and have a go at looking at whether that sort of thing is something you'd like to explore, then absolutely get in touch with.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

And you have to be diagnosed as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, so diagnosed autistic or diagnosed with a learning disability, and then because there's the two distinct different sessions. Yes, yes. Generally, we do learning disability in the morning, autism in the afternoon, but some places we'll have it on two separate days. Yeah, again, that's fine. They're two distinct separate training sessions.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah, yeah, because I'm I'm trained as LD and learn so and it was a really good course. I really enjoyed it. So, I mean, you can talk us through the structure of the day if you want, but from my experience, it was very easygoing, yeah, and you get to learn a lot of skill sets there in terms of talking, knowing yourself for a kickoff, yeah, and be able to translate that to other people. So, if you could just talk through training of that from your experience.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

So, the training for you for the experts, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good question. Casting his eye across the room, three days training, and then know there's a micro teach in that as well. So there's a bit of understanding around this is what the course is there for, and that's what the content of the course, and then there's a little bit of work done in by way of support so that you can practice delivering a small aspect of it, and then we just take it from there. Once that training's been done, we'll take you out. But like I say, you can buddy somebody, and again, there's never any pressure to deliver any more than you want to or you're comfortable doing. So if on the day it's about just sitting there and for the learning disability, for example, I'll just share my couple of speeches because they have some set speeches in there, yeah, then that's fine. For an autistic expert, it'll be down to the trainer to go. So we're going to talk about intersectionality. Do you want to share your understanding of this? We might talk about sensory difficulties or preferences. Just do you want to share a little bit? No, not today. Okay, well, that's fine. So I'll talk about the sensory differences then, and we'll pick that up and then hopefully throughout the time that we'll get interrupted and somebody go, Well, actually, John, I find it more like this. Great, so let's explore that then. So, but like I say, it's not about putting anybody centre stage and saying, right, you've got to go and deliver this. We're there for all that. Yeah, we do all the kit and arranging the day and chairs and bossing people around and make sure you're all back after lunch. We look after all of that. But what about when you're actually delivering the training?

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

What about that? Where do you usually we there's some real differences out there? I'm looking at the guys. Oh we're going, oh yeah, there is. Yeah. One of the big venues over in North Manchester, we actually have a teaching hospital lecture theatre. It probably holds around 120 people. Actually, we've got 120 seats. We only ever maximum we'll ever do training to is 30, so there's never a huge number like that. Although 30 heads can be a lot to look at when you stood up on that stage. So that's probably the grandest one. It's got a TV screen bigger than this wall, and that all feels very, very professional. We deliver in smaller training rooms that will hold 20 odd folk, and then we've got one where we actually were on part of a ward that's no longer used, so we're just in a big area there. I mean, it's fascinating because there's bits of kit hanging off the wall and all that kind of stuff. But you're in that world as well, absolutely. And of course, they're very comfortable. Yeah, yeah. This is where I work, so yeah, yeah, they're really comfortable in that environment. So it's interesting the dynamic kind of changes, like that. Yeah, you're more comfortable here than I am.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, might be something that I'd be interested in saying, can you sort of look ahead and say this is the training you're gonna do in the next couple of months and say which location you drive to?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, interesting, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 14:04

I'll get to it. I'll be doing a lot more training myself and looking forward to it. Fabulous. You know, good, yeah, let's get you on one. I know, okay, wait. Let's talk about fundraising now, because you do a lot of fundraising, which we've talked about last time.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Have we mentioned the fact that I'm potentially running a marathon in April? No, that's not. Have I ever mentioned that? No. It might have come up on an email.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

I remember that.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Yeah, no, there's nothing to do with tutus. There definitely won't be a tutu. Because I'm sure it's sort of like I said, let's just be happy that I'll still be able to walk at the end of it.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Oh, but seriously, you are doing a good fundraiser.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

We're trying. We're trying. So there's a group of us, one of us is diagnosed autistic, the others are just wandering around the autistic community, label us. So our intention is to uh undertake like 26.2 miles, 19th of April, in Manchester City Centre. So if you want to come and watch somebody slowly painfully die, you're more than welcome to come and not I'm not a bad runner, so stand near the end.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

You know, it won't be early on. Oh I'll come along and support, obviously. So you haven't got a figure in mind to raise, have you?

SPEAKER_01 15:11

No, currently we sat just over£800. I would obviously like to see that just touch a thousand.

SPEAKER_02 15:18

And what's the best way of donating money?

SPEAKER_01 15:21

That's a really good question. Yeah, it would be great if I had an answer for that. Put a link in the description. There you go. And then you can jump on, you can jump on that. What I would say, and I keep emphasising this all the time, is that none of the funding is going towards purchasing the places or anything like that. We've done all that, all the places and tickets to enter, they've all been bought. Every single penny that's raised will go straight back to AWP. We've also tried to bypass as much as we can these places that take a cut or a percentage of it. So every single penny, as much as we legally can will go straight back into AWP, and hopefully we'll have an impact on the sport that these guys do in our very area.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Does the Autism Wellbeing Project do all sorts of different types of fundraising? So from book cake sales or running or oh, we've got we've got we got we've got a meeting coming. Actually, I'm that one. Yeah, I'm at that one. So maybe a future podcast we can go through the meeting then, yeah. You know, give give the audience a chance to sort of look through what we're doing so they know in in advance to how to support, really. That would be a great idea. Exactly. Exactly. Because again, I want to help raise money too. I'm not a big runner, I'd be I don't think it'll work for me.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

You know, well, I've I mean, straight into my mind has come, I like the idea of let's pull a canal boat up the canal. Oh, interesting. I I think we could all pull it. Yeah. So I'm gonna think my challenge next year is to pull a canal boat up the canal.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Yes, pull a canal boat. So an arrow boat, not a wide beam. Yeah. Oh yeah, I keep forgetting you don't know what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

I don't care, we're gonna pull it.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

What's this space? Well, I remember we did something similar once years ago. Right. And we pulled the canal like what the horses used to do all the way down towards the Brindley. Oh, by the way, you have to dress up as a horse.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Okay. 2027, we're all gonna dress up as horses and we are gonna pull a canal boat.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Yeah, I'll be there to film it.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Let's just say for now, if you could donate to the marathon, that's fabulous. Forget the horse bit for now, yeah. So only for now, because that is gonna be coming to a YouTube channel near you soon.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

On the AWP one, absolutely, yeah, because we are launching a YouTube channel very, very soon. Visual when this are you watching it on this? Although if you've seen it, it's already happened. It is important to raise awareness and money at the same time. Absolutely. I'm sure we're gonna be aiming to be at festivals and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

So yes, and we are already at sensory nook, Saints, Helen's Stadium, Liverpool women's play there as well. Yeah, oh we have, and there is also a programme of support and training that we can go out to the likes of beauty salons or hair salons or dentists, doctors, nurses, etc., would be included in the Oliver McGowan training. But AWPR, now we've put some training together where we can go out into the workplace. I think we said gyms as well. So there's a whole host of stuff that we're trying to think. How could we make this more autistic, friendly? Not asking businesses to reinvent the wheel, just there's certain aspects that actually, if you made some small minor changes, you might as we've said before.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

I mean, a lot of people are aware of this, but they don't connect to it. So, as you say, delivering this training with lived experience, it makes it so much more valuable. A lot of those people in that room, the seminar room, I think it's the one you mentioned. I was there, and they're all engrossed in what Steele O'Brien's saying, you know, because they've never connected that dot before.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Puts people in that safe environment to ask questions, and again, it's part of my role, I guess, to a facilitation trainer is to make that environment feel safe for somebody to ask a question that they might not feel is either politically correct in the workplace or might not appear to be, I'm not that clued up. Well, this is a safe space. Now's your time to ask somebody. The expert will have support there as well, either through the co-facilitator or there could even be support present looking after that individual. So safe space, ask the question, get it cleared up in your own mind. And then when you're going back into the workplace, you go with a much clearer idea of what is it that we're doing here that's actually disadvantaging people. And we actually cover it off in the training. When we go into these sessions with consultants, etc., it's not about saying we want you to give learning disability and autistic people an advantage over anybody else. What we're saying is, can you just not disadvantage them? Yeah, it'd be really great if it was just a level playing field and everything was just as accessible for everybody as it is neurotypical. So it's not about going and beating anybody up, it's just about saying there's a little bit of an insight into our world. Do you think there's anything you could do to just allow us to access screening services that mean that our lives last as long as those who are neurotypics?

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Of course, of course, and that's the whole point in the Alban Gowan training. So, John, thank you so much for coming on. You're welcome. Not galloping. And uh, yeah, if you want to know more about the training in general and also AWP project, then links in the description for both YouTube and our social medias and link trees and all that lot. So it's all there. And if you want to get involved with the podcast as well, your citizenswellbean podcast at gmail.com. Are you coming back again soon? Absolutely, next week. You enjoyed it so much, aren't you? Bring it on. Bring it on. Thank you so much. Welcome. Take care. Bye bye.