Ep. 88 Neurodiversity Affirming Counseling for Autism, ADHD, & PDA with AuDHDer & LCSW Sam Marion
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What does it mean to be a neuro‑diversity‑affirming social worker?
What's up everyone and welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids.
We're an SLP couple from California with four boys. And we're here every week to
bring you neuro-affirming
tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift?
Let's do it! Welcome, everyone, to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids. I'm really excited about this episode. I was recently watching a show with David Letterman. You know, it's that show where it's like this next guest doesn't need an introduction, and this one doesn't because he's great. I've heard him on other podcasts and all of his work that he's been doing. And his name is Sam Marion. He's a licensed clinical social worker. We're going to dive into that topic, but I don't want to tell too much because I want to pass the torch over to Sam. Sam, can you give us a quick introduction? Tell us about yourself.
Yeah, Chris. First, just thanks for having me. I'm excited about this. My name is Sam Marion and I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I identify as mostly neurodivergent because I it's takes too much time to say that I'm autistic ADHD. I have a reading disability. I have executive function challenges. I'm sure I'm forgetting something on the list. And so, yeah, I have a lot of lived experience around this, but I'm also late to understanding a lot of this too. So this is, you know, I'm a couple of years into the journey of understanding the autistic part of who I am. I'm in private practice. I work a lot of neurodivergent folks, my background before, you know, this sort of flavor of neurodivergent work was I'm a trauma therapist by training.
And so this is, I love what I do. I love who I get to work with. I, you know, the social work questions, I know that's what I'm here to talk about. I'm excited about it. my existence on social media came out of social work groups rejecting the topic of neurodiversity-affirming care. And I thought, okay, well, I guess I got to get active and do my own, be my own voice out there if the organizations are not going to embrace it. So I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to talk about it because I think this is really an important topic.
Yeah, absolutely. I love everything that you mentioned. And we're noticing that pattern a lot more too when we start to learn more about characteristics and traits, and then finding out later in life, oh, you know what? I'm a late diagnosed individual. And I think that adds a lot of value to what our line of work is in your line of work. You know, I wanted to really dive into the licensed clinical social work stuff, because when you start to dive into learning, like all things about, you know, autism and PDA, you I don't know if you're like me, but when I learn a little bit, I'm like, I need more.
How does Sam Marion describe his own neurodivergent identity and training?
Right. I want to learn a lot. And I had come by, you know, neurodiversity affirming licensed clinical social workers. I was like, you know what? I don't really know much about that. And I asked some colleagues and. think that this is going to be so valuable because I don't have that knowledge. So can you help share with the audience what exactly is an LCSW and how does that like tie into working with neurodivergent clients and students?
Yeah, so this is going to be probably like an answer. I'm going to start wide and try to come in narrow at the end here. And so social workers do a lot of things. You know, I tend to tell people if you're trying to get a perspective on where are social workers, any place you may find a nurse, you can probably find a social worker. So we exist in a lot of spaces. And even in our graduate training, it's a master's degree that you need for most practice. There are two different paths and maybe more, but there's kind of the macro path. I'm going to work with maybe nonprofits. I'm going to work with big groups. And there's the micro path or the clinical route. So I went the clinical route. So I'm a clinical social worker, which means the sort of the core training of social work includes stuff around social justice and policy work.
That's sort of, you know, human behavior and social environment is a class that exists in kind of every social work program.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What does it mean to be a neuro‑diversity‑affirming social worker?
0:08–2:59
2
How does Sam Marion describe his own neurodivergent identity and training?
2:59–7:36
3
What are the core responsibilities of a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) for neurodivergent clients?
7:36–11:51
4
How can families and schools connect with a neurodiversity‑affirming LCSW?
11:51–14:47
5
What referral pathways and outreach methods does Sam use to reach clients?
14:47–17:59
6
Why is a systems‑focused, family‑centered approach important in neurodivergent care?
17:59–20:25
7
Where can listeners find Sam’s resources, courses, and contact information?
20:25–20:38
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
Ep. 125 How to Run Successful Social Groups
Ep. 124 Building Rapport Isn’t Enough...How Therapists Become Part of the Intervention
Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)