Courtney Rosato speaks with Flic Manning about her late diagnosis of Autism and ADHD, and how her lived experience has shaped her career across education, law and large-scale disability reform. Drawing on her work leading systemic inclusion initiatives, Courtney challenges common misconceptions about neurodivergent people in dynamic workplaces and shares why proactive adjustments and neuroaffirming leadership are key to genuine inclusion.
The Sunflower Conversations is a Podcast where we explore the experiences of people living with hidden disabilities and what the Sunflower means to them. It’s a space to share your experience and to empower and encourage more people to support invisible disabilities.
A big thank you to Flic Manning for conducting the interviews with compassion and respect and to Sandee Facy for the beautiful Sunflower song. You can follow Sandee Facy's music here. If you want to share your experience, get in touch with us by emailing us here.
Transcript:
(0:01 - 0:54)
Flic Manning: We acknowledge and pay respects to the traditional custodians of the lands on which we record, and especially to those who may also be living with a disability. Welcome to another episode of the Sunflower Conversations, where we will explore a variety of disabilities, the way in which people experience their disabilities, and discover the opportunities for society to make access and inclusion improvements for everyone. My name is Flic Manning, and I'm your host.
Hi everyone. My name is Flic Manning, and like many of the guests on the Sunflower Conversations, I'm also disabled. Some of my conditions include Crohn's disease, Lupus, and Reynaud’s syndrome. Today, I'm joined by a wonderful human from our community, Courtney Rosato. Courtney, welcome to the show.
(0:55 - 0:57)
Courtney Rosato: Thanks so much for having me, Flic. I'm excited to be here.
(0:58 - 1:09)
Flic Manning: I'm excited to be chatting to you. Now, Courtney, you have been very open about your experiences with Autism and ADHD, and you've also worked across some vastly different spaces, from classrooms to councils to the Pilbara.
So what has your lived experience been of navigating these different spaces with your invisible or hidden conditions?
(1:10 - 5:01)
Courtney Rosato: I, like many of us in this community, had a very late diagnosis, so the majority of my university studies through my undergrad in law, all the way through to my master's, was actually undiagnosed. So it's been quite an interesting journey that I've taken. And one of the most interesting aspects of navigating my diagnosis has been that I'm actually a disability, developmental disability specialist.
So I've worked in education for 14 years in various different roles. I started out during my law degree, started out in special units on the Gold Coast, working as an ES whilst I went through my law degree and my studies. And that really triggered a passion in me around inclusion and the concept of equity, especially back then when we had these exclusionary units that sat within mainstream schools. But I didn't really identify or understand why I was so drawn to this and why my heightened sense of justice in that space existed until I obviously went through a formal diagnosis. But it's really, it's been really, really interesting being, like obviously going through working in inclusive education within mainstream schools, within special schools. I've led the program for students with disabilities.
I've been a leading teacher in this space. And most recently, I actually was leading the rollout of the $1.6 billion Disability Inclusion Reforms in the southeast of Victoria. So working so heavily within this space, having such an in-depth understanding, reading, language assessments, speech assessments, working with psychologists, OTs, every single type of allied health professional, and really starting to reflect on my own, like reflect inwards. Often what I've found, though, is it's really difficult to separate the person or my personal lived experience from professional specialist expert Courtney. But what I think that I've really found is that as a neurodivergent person, our spaces aren't really, or systems aren't really built for us. And that doesn't mean that we can't thrive in them.
It just means that support, expectations and environments need a shift. And through my time, what I've found is that we, as people with lived experience, especially people working within this sector that have lived experience and are experts in this space, we have this brilliant opportunity to bring in that theoretical, practical understanding and, and utilise our lived experience to create systemic change. And I'm, obviously I have a legal background. So for me, creating actual sustainable systemic change comes from reflecting on policies, processes, system-wide structures, and really pushing the boundaries around what can we do better? How can we learn from what we've done in the past? And how do we really create tangible change rather than just being tokenistic? What we've kind of done in the past where like disability inclusion exists in a silo and we're happy to celebrate an awareness day or we're happy to have a speaker come in and talk to us about reasonable adjustments, but it doesn't really change the system. So I really have been in a blessed, I guess, space where I've been passionate about this work. I knew this was what I wanted to do.
However, you know, coming to that diagnosis later in life, it just added to that professional, theoretical, practical understanding of the work I did. It just made it so much more personal. And it really has allowed me to, to really challenge those preconceived notions and stereotypes. And really, I do believe it's one of the reasons why I've been so successful in what I've done in my career in this space.
(5:02 - 5:18)
Flic Manning: Yeah, how interesting, what interesting threads to all tie together. And in your experience, what are some of those persistent misconceptions around Neurodivergent people in professional spaces, particularly when it comes to capability or communication style?
(5:19 - 8:02)
Courtney Rosato: I've worked in really dynamic spaces. So during my career, only my last position when I was working in local government, have I really had an office based job. So I have spent the predominant time in my career working in very dynamic, heavily change driven environments. But one of the common aspects of that has been that they've been very heavily compliance driven, lots of regulatory, lots of safety and standards. So there is that structure where people may not necessarily see that structure. And one of the big misconceptions that I think, or one of the, I guess, one of the assumptions that I see often about Neurodivergent people in the workplace is that we're not suited to dynamic, fast changing environments, when the truth is completely like far more nuanced than that. In fact, I've spent, like I said, the majority of my career in fast paced changing environments.
And the reason I'm so adaptable and have been able to make such informed decisions being calm under pressure, I've had, you know, like working especially in special school environments or inclusive units within mainstream schools. You're working with students that have quite complex needs. You're navigating different systems, whether that's the out-of-school care system, you've got students in ready care, you've got students with wraparound supports, you have, you're applying trauma informed practice.
There's so many different aspects to that environment where I truly believe that my neurodivergence has allowed me to see the bigger picture and to be able to understand the procedure, to be able to identify, for example, with positive behaviour support, understand how positive behaviour support can be applied. I do think that people hear the word neurodivergence, especially when they hear the word autism and they automatically assume that you need to be in an office, you need to be in a quiet room and that it's not going to, you're not, you're not cut out for this fast paced, ever changing environment. I have heard comments around, well, this environment's really challenging.
It's really dynamic. How will you go in that? Well, that's all I know. And that is actually where I thrive because I can see the bigger picture and I can also identify where we could put in place a system or a process that could eliminate some of that unpredictability that may be causing people some anxiety. And it's not just good for people with neurodivergent people. It's good for everyone. So I really do believe that when we, when it comes to that biggest assumption or misconception that I see, it's really that we struggle with change. And it's not that we struggle with change. It's that we struggle with unclear, unsupportive change and vague feedback. So the issue isn’t capacity.It's whether the systems and leaders are equipped to remove arbitrary barriers.
(8:03 - 8:23)
Flic Manning: Ooh, I love that. Anyone listening or, and or reading the transcript of this show today, I hope you go back and read or listen to that again, because I think that was so incredibly insightful. Now, in terms of that inclusion specifically, what does that genuine inclusion look like to you in the world? And how do you know when it's actually happening versus when it's performative?
(8:24 - 11:37)
Courtney Rosato: So if any of my previous colleagues are listening to this, they'll all like go, this is so Courtney, because I'm, I'm very open and honest about how I work and how I work is that I am a, like a firm believer. And it probably comes back to that, that legal background around systemic, sustainable change. I've also worked in school. So I've been blessed to be working within an absolutely incredible team. The way that we operated was through implementation science. So I believe that everything that we do, there needs to be data-informed practice. There needs to be the why. So creating systemic, sustainable change, we need to have metrics to measure whether the change is actually successful. We need to make changes to ensure that we're implementing something, that we're implementing it with fidelity.
We don't just like, you know, throw a morning tea and say it's for international, for example, people with a disability day. I truly believe that when it comes to genuine inclusion, context is really important. So I, and this is kind of reflective of what we're doing, I'm doing with my career right now. When I was in law school, I was fascinated by policy. And obviously my passion for equity and seeing injustice, especially for vulnerable communities like people with a disability, really led me down that particular path. And it's really interesting because I always said that I don't want to be someone that's drafting policy that has not got contextual knowledge and understanding. That is what actually led me to do my post-grad. So I went into teaching because I wanted to have classroom experience. I knew that being a teacher wasn't what I wanted to do.
That wasn't necessarily the end outcome, but I wanted to understand the systems, the processes, how things function on the ground before I was in a position where I could lead a school or lead a department and going to a space where I was drafting policy, having a practical understanding of how that looks on the ground. And that's what I think led to such success in my previous role within the department of education. We were rolling out the reform and I worked with a particular school that was seen as a lighthouse school across the state for the work that we'd done in inclusive education around changing systems and processes and really creating and casting an inclusive lens over whole school practice.
And the reason I could do that work and the reason I had such a high level of understanding of what that work looked like on the ground was because I worked on the ground. Policy needs to be living, breathing documentation. It doesn't just sit on a shelf gathering dust, right? It needs to be something that can actually be put into action on the ground. And to me, when we see just policies like generic reasonable adjustment policies, generic disability disclosure policies, like tokenistic, morning teas, not saying there's not a place for those things, but those things alone won't shape the change that we're looking for.
(11:38 - 12:20)
Flic Manning: Hear, hear, hear, hear. I think it's really important that it's not the ticking of a box. So in terms of your lived experience of neurodivergence, how has that actually shaped the way you approach that systems level reform, whether that's in designing policy, leading teams or coaching others through that sort of change and implementation?
(12:21 - 15:10)
Courtney Rosato: I always am a true believer that if there's an appetite for change, change can happen. So I'm not there to say that, you know, we've got a thousand experts in this space and everyone has like, you know, we, there is definitely capacity building issues and we need to make sure that we are bridging the gap because that definitely exists. But as long as people come and they've got this, this attitude where they, they want to do better, I think that you can always do better. And I've surrounded myself, my, always surrounded myself with change leaders and, and champions. And in my previous role, I established a working group called the Disability Inclusion Champions Network, which was a, the intended purpose of the network was not just to bring together people with lived experience, but was to be a core, a core, I guess, arms for allies. So not just having people with disability who always have to advocate for themselves because we know how challenging that is.
We're the face of everything, we're expected to be involved in solving the solutions to the problems. So it's, it was about having, identifying allies and then building their capacity in this space so that they could go out into their different areas of expertise, whether that was engineering, planning, I had people from such a diverse portfolio, facilities management, and they could take that shared learning that they'd, so I did all the upskilling, capacity building myself and creating systemic change through capacity building and education. The more we educate people, the more we remove ableism, misconceptions, preconceived notions of bias.
So really providing people with that opportunity to understand, that opportunity to learn and providing evidence-based best practice, not just my experience, using my experience, but really backing that with evidence-based peer reviewed studies and then using my experience as a way of really making it a personal experience as well and seeing the impact on the person. Something that I've spoken about quite predominantly throughout my career, that if you are a people leader and you do have responsibility where you are leading a team, that I do believe that specifically disability inclusion training should be a mandated requirement and that there should be an onus on a people leader, as soon as you step into a position of responsibility where you are leading a team, that there is a sense of responsibility that you do understand ableism, internal ableism. You have an understanding of neuro affirming practice.
You have an understanding of what reasonable adjustments are, what the legislation says about that, how it falls under the new W, H and S regulations around psychosocial health as well as physical health. So truly, I do believe that there is a responsibility for people leaders to ensure that they don't hide behind not knowing, but I believe education is the key to this. So if we educate and we lead from that perspective, I do think that that creates that systemic change that I've been talking about.
(15:11 - 15:55)
Flic Manning: A thousand percent behind you on that. I would love to see that become just a standardised part of any person that is responsible for a team of people to be given adequate training for there to be that sense of responsibility, but also for their management to understand that this must come with the role, that it has to come from top down and filter through. It's just so important. And like you said, education is really the key to making that happen. So thank you for highlighting that aspect of it. Now, Courtney, if you could see just two systemic shifts take hold tomorrow, whether it be in a school or workplace or just wider society that would make life meaningfully better for neurodivergent people, what would they be?
(15:56 - 21:09)
Courtney Rosato: So the first would be normalising proactive adjustments.
Everyone benefits from clarity, flexibility and autonomy. So if you have neuroinforming practice, if you're using positive behaviour support, utilising trauma-informed practice, that's actually going to benefit all students. So the same can be applied to more broader workplaces where we look at if we start with the assumption that everyone benefits from these types of adjustments, clear communication. We talk a lot about communication because I believe that's the key. But if we look at some of those aspects of what assists people in the workplace and provides that supportive, psychologically safe environment, it's not just good for your neurodivergent employees. It is good for everyone.
So I really believe that if we normalise proactive adjustments, we can really minimise or mitigate risk. And I don't think we should wait for someone to ask. Obviously, there's legal implications for that as well. When someone discloses disability, there are protections, obviously, where the onus is on the company to be able to action those reasonable adjustments, but if they're required. But we just need to make sure that we have systems of support that are built in. So we shouldn't have to wait for someone to ask for support.
There should be systems and processes in place that are built into how we run a company, how we lead a team that provide that wraparound support so that we actually then start to minimise the amount of people who actually have to ask for reasonable adjustments because they're just the norm in the workplace. So that would be an absolute dream come true if we normalise those proactive adjustments. But the other one is trained supervisors and team leaders in neuroaffirming practices. We know the statistics around neurodivergence now. It's no longer new. We know the statistics, especially amongst undiagnosed people, especially women.
And we know that within teams, if we're leading a team, if we look at the statistics, we're going to have neurodivergent people within our team, whether they're disclosing, whether they're diagnosed or not. So give people within a position of leadership the tools to recognise deregulation, the confidence to provide feedback that is done in a constructive way that also takes into consideration that people with neurodivergent people can have rejection sensitivity as well. So understanding what that looks like when we're providing feedback and also having conversations about communication methods and how we prefer to, how we like to receive feedback.
And I just believe that there's so many different types of adjustments that we could have embedded within the culture of our organisations that would then mitigate that requirement to have such individualised plans. Even though some people may require that, we would be reducing the amount of those individualised plans because we would have those tier one practices, those wraparound supports for All Star. But I guess one of the big things that I just wanted to emphasise too is that I've been in this space for a very long time. I've been to a lot of different conferences, heard some expert speakers and I've spoken a lot about workplace adjustments and reasonable adjustment policies. It's a passion of mine. But one of the things that I definitely see a lack of is when I have seen people speak about reasonable adjustments and reasonable adjustment policies, disclosure, it's always in traditional workplace settings.
So the reasonable adjustments are always around things that can be done in an office environment. And we have very few experts or very few resources available to guide workplaces that are, like I spoke about earlier, dynamic, ever-changing environments, emergency services, classrooms. So working now over in mining, it's been absolutely amazing to see how much scope and space there is to really look at that dynamic, ever-changing environment.
And I like the concept of let's look at controlling the controllable, right? So there are always aspects of things that can be controlled. So whether that's inductions, whether that's preparing people to visit site, having virtual flyovers, understanding nuances of things like crib breaks and understanding like when you're living on site, for example, if you are FIFO, understanding like the unspoken rules of like the mess or the, you know, getting around campsite and things like that and the bus system and all of that, having wraparound supports to really be able to set you up for success and controlling the controllable because that allows a neurodivergent person to then thrive under pressure and to be able to take on board the unpredictable nature of the job because we're controlling the controllable and we're setting them up for success. So I really do believe that if we train supervisors, leaders in neuroaffirming practice, that we start to contextualise when we speak about reasonable adjustments and we move away from this whole generic one size fits all approach to reasonable adjustments that I see so often.
And it would be great to start to see more case studies come through from some of those more dynamic environments as well.
(21:10 - 21:30)
Flic Manning: Yeah, so perfectly put. I think actually we could just have that as a T-shirt or a motto for life, you know, control the controllable. I think it's so, that's so vastly a great piece of advice for so many different situations and circumstances, but obviously so specifically as well for what you've just talked about.
Courtney, thank you so much for spending some time with us today, sharing your lived experience and your insights. I know it's going to be very valuable for everyone that is on the receiving end of this episode today.
(21:30 - 21:33)
Courtney Rosato: Thank you so much.
(21:33- 21:49)
Flic Manning: Thank you for joining us for another Sunflower Conversation. Please keep the conversation going via our website hdsunflower.com/au on Facebook @HiddenDisabilitiesANZ or on Instagram @HiddenDisabilities_ANZ