Thorkils Story

The idea of Specialisterne started with Lars…

Lars was 2½ years old and his development began to differ from that of his older brothers. My wife and I arranged with the pedagogues that a psychologist should supervise him. We hoped of course that we could learn how best to help him becoming more like his brothers.

Our lifes changed
We were informed that Lars had infantile autism, a life-long invisible handicap in the category Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).  Lars would face a life where he would be constantly misunderstood and isolated because it would be difficult for him to interpret what others expected of him. Most likely, Lars would never have a normal working life.

My fight

I became active in the Danish Autism Association.  I learned about the Danish welfare model from within. I realized that the model fundamentally is strong and has many good aspects. But I also realized that families who have a child with ASD have a high risk of disintegration. The handicap is invisible – and therefore it is a never ending struggle for a family to get the outside world to understand and provide support at the right time. The social workers also have difficult conditions – the welfare schemes are present, but how do you help persons with complicated invisible handicaps, when society is not very accommodating to persons who cannot live up to the traditional expectations of good social skills? I experienced that both the ones who need the help and the ones who provide help are under great and increasing strain.

I mortgaged our home

With a strong commitment from my family I mortgaged our home and established Specialisterne (The Specialists) as an attempt to tailor a working environment for people with ASD in order to let them solve valuable tasks for the business sector at market terms.

My vision is to creat new possibilities for people with ASD and influencing society to adopt a more positive attitude to persons with ASD.

Thorkil Sonne