A chat with Kat from Into Work

We’re celebrating the local services that empower autistic people this Autism Awareness Month.

Into Work support disabled and neurodivergent people, and those with long-term health conditions, to achieve their employment goals and potential.

We asked Kat, a Lived Experience and Training Lead at Into Work, to share a bit about how their Aut Support Works! Service is empowering autistic jobseekers.

What we do

Into Work is an Edinburgh and Lothians based charity. We support disabled and neurodivergent people, and those with long-term health conditions, to achieve their employment goals and potential.

We provide wrap-around, person-centred employment advice and support, including with wellbeing and with accessing benefits and entitlements. We work with people of all ages to help them secure fair, meaningful, and sustainable employment.

We have a growing in-house team of neurodivergent Lived Experience Trainers who provide Scottish Government funded support for autistic job-seekers and employees. This includes running 8-week small group ‘Aut Support Works!’ courses in Edinburgh for autistic people, supporting participants to better understand their own needs and strengths and how to effectively navigate recruitment processes, disclosure, reasonable adjustment requests and work environments as an autistic person.

As well as traditional learning, the courses provide a safe autistic peer space to explore challenges, fears and concerns, as well as hopes and things that people have found helpful. We are currently developing a series of follow-up practical workshops to further support course participants to apply their learning.

The team also runs one-off themed online sessions that autistic job-seekers and employees in Scotland can attend without needing to commit to a full 8-week course. Topics include: Applying for jobs, interviews, autistic wellbeing, autism disclosure, reasonable adjustments, self-advocacy, workplace cultures and career progression. Our next series of these drop-in online Aut Support Sessions will run on Monday afternoons from 17 Aug to 5 Oct 2026. These free online sessions are open to autistic job-seekers and employees, and also to family and friends providing informal support. We will open the next series of free online sessions for registration in mid-May.

Details of all our sessions and courses are available on our website: https://intowork.org.uk/events/

The difference we’re making

Our whole team are passionate about making society more inclusive of neurodivergent and disabled people generally.

We know how important work and volunteering roles can be for people’s mental health, self-esteem and social connectedness, as well as financial security.

As a lived experience team, we’ve all individually encountered barriers to getting, sustaining and progressing in jobs for which we are well qualified. We’re committed to helping others to overcome similar barriers and love to hear about people we’ve supported thriving in a new job or career.

There’s a lot of useful synergy between the support we provide to employees and job-seekers and the training we deliver to employers. Our training and support programmes are constantly evolving – every day is a learning day at Into Work!

What participants say

• “An indirect result of this course was that I got my ‘unicorn job’… I would never apply to it if not for the session about job applications and interviews.”
• “I really valued the way the topics were approached through not just a factual and practical lens, but constant discussion of autistic experiences from the inside. This really helped me to understand the reasons behind lots of difficulties as well as autistic strengths and to put them into context.”
• “I have really loved and gained so much from attending Aut Support Works! It is the best autistic-focused course/group I’ve experienced! With employment being the area of my life I have struggled with the most and which presents too many challenges for autistic people, I’ve found the experience of the course incredibly meaningful and helpful.”

How I look after my mental health

Work is often very busy so it’s important for me to make sure I squeeze in some regular walks in nature. This always helps to relieve stress and allow me to re-balance.

I also very much enjoying playing music, which gives me focus when I’m practicing and is a great way of connecting with other people when we meet to play and sing together.

Find out more about Aut Support Works with Into Work.