This LET’S workshop is designed for front-line staff working in shelters, outreach, and housing who support people navigating homelessness and neurodivergence (including autistic, ADHD, learning disabled, and other neurodivergent communities) and/or are neurodivergent themselves.

We will look at how systems, rules, and environments in homelessness services are often built around neuro-centred norms – strict routines, bright and noisy spaces, complex forms, fast-paced conversations – and how these can create extra barriers or trigger crisis for neurodivergent people. We also talk about the reality that many people won’t have a formal diagnosis, but are still living with very real needs, histories of trauma, and patterns of masking, shutdown, or avoidance that workers may be encountering every day.

The session focuses on practical, low-barrier changes workers can make right away, even in under-resourced settings: adapting communication, offering more than one way to engage with services, building in predictability and clear information, and making small environmental shifts toward lower stimulation and more choice.

Grounded in disability justice, the session invites service providers, organizers, and community members to move beyond “awareness” toward concrete change. Together, we discuss what neurodiversity-affirming, low-barrier, and consent-based support can look like in shelters, outreach, and housing, and how to reduce the burden on neurodivergent people to constantly “fit” systems that were not built for them. Participants leave with practical ideas for shifting policies, day-to-day practices, and environments – along with reflection questions to continue this work in their teams and organizations.

Participants will have space to share what they’re seeing on the ground, reflect on what’s working and what isn’t, and explore strategies that reduce the pressure on neurodivergent people to “fit” services that weren’t designed with them in mind. The goal is to leave with concrete ideas, language, and tools that support safety, trust, and more sustainable relationships between front-line workers and neurodivergent people experiencing homelessness.