We have been very busy behind the scenes at Procrastination Station so I wanted to post an update to let people know that progress is happening – slowly, but nevertheless, things are moving in the right direction. I’m aware that from just seeing the website it may not appear that we have been up to much but that is very much not the case.
In the past week alone I have uploaded the completed paperwork to register Procrastination Station as a Community Interest Company (CIC); had a telephone conversation with Daniel Johnson MSP; arranged to meet with an OT who works with ADHDers in Edinburgh; arranged a meeting with the ADHDer and OT behind Mood Lifter; finished the 1st draft of an article on the SPARK strategy; received a reply from the Scottish Government; sent emails to Jonna Kuntsi and John Gabrieli, and had an online conversation with a UX/UI expert about the website. I have also started looking into funding options. In addition to this, in the past few weeks I have spoken with Tony Lloyd, CEO of the ADHD Foundation; spoken with the person organising the Monty Hitchcock exhibition; had team meetings for the study into ADHD & Women that I am part of; answered enquiries to the website, and continued researching ADHD & creativity for the article I am writing for Think Divergent, which has involved Zoom calls with Prof. Roger Beaty and world-renowned ADHD expert, Dr. Ned Hallowell.
Community Interest Company (CIC)
A CIC is a form of social enterprise. It is a “special type of limited company which exists to benefit the community rather than private shareholders“. In this case, the community being adult ADHDers in Scotland. Unlike a charity, a CIC will be expected to make a profit, however, due to an ‘asset lock’, which is a legal promise stating that the company’s assets will only be used for its social objectives, all profits will go back into the company. There are two documents required for registering a CIC – the Community Interest Statement, which outlines what the business plans to do and the Articles of Association – which is an important document, as it holds the rules, regulations and bye-laws for internal administration and management of the company. We decided to have these completed by a lawyer to ensure that all were correctly managed. The lawyer uploaded these documents on Wednesday afternoon and we were told it would take approximately 2 working days for registration to be complete so we are expecting this to be finalised at the beginning of this week.
The primary source of income for Procrastination Station will be through ADHD Coaching, which will be offered on a sliding scale with a commitment to making it as widely available as possible regardless of income. We will also apply for grants to help fund this. However, I won’t be qualified as a fully certified ADHD Coach until Autumn next year and so far I have been unable to locate any other certified ADHD coaches in Scotland. This is something that I am continuing to work on and have a possible lead. My hope is that we will be in a position to be offering coaching before next Autumn but that is an ongoing mission.
In addition to coaching, Procrastination Station will also be running bespoke workshops throughout Scotland. These could take the form of group coaching; skill-sharing; help with seeking employment etc. and we will be applying for funding to enable us to run them.
Occupational Therapy
OTs can and do play a very important role in the management of ADHD. Unfortunately at the present time, there are not many of them working in this area in Scotland. However, I was delighted to be contacted by one of the few who are and we have a meeting planned for this Thursday. It is my hope that in addition to having ADHD coaches working through the Hub we will also have OTs and this is something that may be more immediately possible. I have two meetings with OTs set up for this month and will update with the outcomes of those meetings.
Scottish Government
After attending the last APPG on ADHD meeting I got in touch with the Scottish MPs and MSPs involved – Lisa Cameron and Steven Bonnar (SNP MPs) and Daniel Johnson Labour MSP. I didn’t hear anything back from Steven Bonnar but Lisa Cameron sent a brief email saying that she would do all she could “to progress this matter” and I then received a copy of a letter sent from her to Humza Yousaf MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Health, asking what the Scottish Government planned to do to ensure access to diagnosis and treatment for people with ADHD.
In addition to this, I received a response from Valerie Campbell:
“As you noted, a Learning Disabilities, Autism and Neurodiversity Commissioner was a commitment in the SNP manifesto and further details of next steps will be set out in due course. As with every piece of proposed legislation, working with individuals and organisations will be at its heart.
We have already commissioned the National Autism Implementation Team (NAIT) to draft an adult
ADHD clinical pathway and carry out a feasibility study with NHS Boards to investigate how such a
pathway would work and benefit adults diagnosed with ADHD. We await the report from NAIT on this
work and will make recommendations to Ministers on a possible way forward. NAIT also worked closely
with adults with ADHD and NHS Lothian to develop a Self Help Resource Pack for People with Attention
Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder (AD(H)D) which is freely accessible.”
On Friday, I had a very good telephone conversation with Daniel Johnson MSP. Daniel is a fellow ADHDer and is doing all he can to push for awareness and action within the Scottish Government and has been instrumental in pushing for the ADHD pathways as mentioned above. He was very supportive of Procrastination Station and has suggested having a meeting with the team, which we will organise soon.
ADHD Research
Another aspect of the Procrastination Station vision is continued participation in the co-production of ADHD research. Not only do we want to encourage as much research into ADHD as possible we also want to be involved in shaping as much of that research as possible. It is vital that people with lived experience are included. I am delighted to be part of a team put together by Dr. Janine Hawkins, Senior Research Fellow at Hertfordshire University. The fact that Dr. Hawkins has an ADHD diagnosis herself, makes the project all the more appealing to me. I very much look forward to continued meetings with the team.
Further to this, I have been pestering scientists from around the world trying to persuade them to carry out studies into ADHD and creativity. The connection between these two has been talked about for a while now but there has now (inadvertently) been studies proving this connection. Prof. Roger Beaty from the Cognitive Neuroscience of Creativity Laboratory (CNCL) at Penn State University has published a couple of papers documenting studies he has carried out on ‘highly creative’ people. The studies use fMRI and “reveal a whole-brain network associated with high-creative ability comprised of cortical hubs within default, salience, and executive systems—intrinsic functional networks that tend to work in opposition—suggesting that highly creative people are characterized by the ability to simultaneously engage these large-scale brain networks.”
On reading this, I was immediately struck by the similarity with the most recent fMRI data on ADHD brains i.e. that when the Task Positive Network (TPN) is engaged it has been found with ADHDers that the Default Mode Network (DMN) is still engaged and this was described in ADHD 2.0 as a “glitchy switch”. I decided to contact both Prof. Beaty and Dr. Ned Hallowell (author of ADHD 2.0) to ask about this connection and ended up having Zoom chats with them both. I have subsequently contacted John Gabrieli at MIT and Jonna Kuntsi at Kings College London to see what they think. My findings will form part of the article I am writing for Think Divergent that I hope to have finished this month.
Website
Last month we asked people to fill out a questionnaire about the design, usability and content of the website. We received some really useful feedback, which I have been implementing into the site. I also spoke with a UX/UI designer who gave me some additional help.
The website is no where near complete, there is still lots I want to add, it is just a matter of having the time to do it, but I will continue to add more information as I can. There is also a possibility of us applying for funding to have a professional redesign the website for us at some point.
So you can see that lots has been happening and continues to happen. Later this month the Procrastination Station team are getting together to discuss future plans and policy. We are combining this with a trip to the Monty Hitchcock exhibition in Glasgow on the 31st July. It would be great to see ADHDers in Scotland coming out to show support for this. You can find more info on our homepage.