This month Carole Williams is set to retire from her post as autism liaison teacher, after eight years in the role and 45 years in education, writes Paul Hardman.

Set up by charity Autism in Mann and funded by the Department of Education, the role’s duties ranged from Carole working as a consultant with autistic pupils across the island’s schools, working with families at home, and providing training to police, prison officers and bank staff on how to interact with autistic people.

Originally from Liverpool, Carole came to the island as part of a reciprocal teacher exchange scheme and began teaching at Sulby primary school in 1976.

After an experience as a teenage Cub leader working with disabled children, Carole, who lives in Ballabeg, said she always knew she wanted to work with those with special needs.

But going into education at 21, she wanted to gain experience as a primary school teacher first - which is what she began doing at Sulby.

After some time away to have her daughter, Carole began teaching again in 1988 at the Glencrutchery special needs school in Douglas.

It was there that she learnt her skills from the ’amazing staff’ until it closed, at which point her and all the other teachers went on to become special needs unit managers in mainstream schools.

Carole went on to do this at Scoill Vallajeelt in 1992, before finally moving to Port St Mary’s primary school in 1995 where she stayed for 18 years as unit manager.

Talking about the contrast between mainstream teaching and special needs teaching, Carole said: ’For any teacher there’s a challenge every day, but when you work with children that have additional needs, the challenges are very, very different.

’In a [special needs] unit, you can be working with children that have cerebral palsy, downs syndrome, muscular dystrophy - and you have to have that broad knowledge [about disabilities], as well as the knowledge of the academic things that you would be teaching’.

Asked what the most fulfilling parts of the job were, she said: ’When you’ve worked with a child for months and months, sometimes years to do something, and then they achieve that - that is absolutely amazing

’For a mainstream teacher that might mean a child learns their numbers one to 10 which they’ve been trying to do for a year, and they get it in your class.

’But for a special unit, it could be years and years, and then all of a sudden the child will be able to do it - it could be standing up, or something else that is fundamental for other people.

’And just the smiles.

’Still now, as you will find for any unit manager - we still see children that we taught all those years ago, and they recognise us.

’And that is heartwarming.’

After leaving her teaching post at Scoill Phurt le Moirrey, charity Autism in Mann (formerly the Isle of Man Autistic Support Group) appointed her as its first-ever autism liaison worker in 2013, a role which had just been created.

She said that autism had always been the area of special needs which ’really gripped’ her as an interest, having worked with many autistic children as a teacher.

Carole added: ’I can hand on heart say that I have learned more about autism in the last eight years than I knew before I left teaching, because I had been going to National Autistic Society conferences.

’And the speakers at those conferences, more and more are autistic people - they obviously know about autism, because they have it - and we are learning more and more from autistic people rather than academics.

Carole continued: ’You can have a piece of knowledge that you could share with 10 autistic people, but they will [each] need it explained differently.

’So the piece of knowledge that I will give one family for their [autistic] child, will be the same piece of knowledge - but I will say it differently for different families [and children].

’And it’s those nuances that people don’t get.’

One example Carole used to explain the different way that autistic people think is the lack of autism-friendly signage in society.

She talked about how an autistic person would look at a ’dogs must be carried’ sign on an escalator, and interpret that as them being unable to use that escalator unless they are carrying a dog.

Likewise, she once explained to a pool lifeguard that autistic people may not want to use a lane labeled ’continuous swimming only’ because they would think this meant that they could not let their feet touch the bottom, or ever get out of the lane, because that wouldn’t be ’continuous’.

For the new liaison post, Autism in Mann did know that it wanted someone with experience who could work with families, rather than directly with schools.

And during her eight years in the liaison role, Carole worked with a total of 231 families.

She said she would never restrict herself to doing just a set eight-week intervention with a family and then leaving - she always gave her number and said they could call her at any time, with some families getting in touch with her years later to ask for advice.

She explained that when the charity came up with the idea for the liaison role it was unsure what it would become in practice, it just knew that it would involve working with autistic people.

Carole then ’morphed’ it into the varied role which entailed working as a consultant across different environments in the island.

She said: ’Sometimes I’d spend all of my hours one week in schools, doing observations on children or working alongside them, or going along as a support for parents in school meetings, and other weeks I wouldn’t go near a school.’

Carole also helped explain the differences in the way autistic people think when she trained police and prison officers.

’The autistic brain is different to a neurotypical brain,’ she said.

’Frequently when autistic people speak, they’ve taken a while to get the information into their head to form a sentence.

’So often it comes out really aggressively, because they just need to "get it out".

’And when they’re "cornered", or stuck because they don’t know where they are or what they’re doing - [the officers] have to treat that differently, they can’t treat that like they would someone who is neurotypical.’

Carole told us that most of all she will miss all the people she works with, the challenges her job presented, and the feeling of being useful to people.

In retirement she plans to keep busy with things like her volunteer work for the Colby branch of the Royal British Legion - having designed the island’s unique poppy badge, which last year commemorated the key workers and community spirit during the pandemic.

This month the DESC has been accepting applications for Carole’s successor in the autism liaison role.