Why I stopped trying to fix people, and started redesigning the systems around them.
Neal Glendenning
Founder, The Neuro Inclusion Project
WHERE THIS STARTED
For most of my life, I've watched systems fail neurodivergent people.
Schools built on compliance. Workplaces built on performance. Healthcare built on "functionality" instead of humanity. Every one of them asking the same question in a different accent: what's wrong with you — instead of, what's wrong with this.
The truth is, the system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. That's the uncomfortable part. It was never failing by accident.
The longer I worked directly with neurodivergent individuals — and the systems built around them — the clearer it became that the fix was never going to be another training session, another awareness campaign, another well-meaning policy nobody follows. It had to be structural. Measurable. Something an organisation couldn't just nod along to.
WHAT THAT BECAME
Years of
practice
Working directly with neurodivergent individuals
The grounding everything since has come from - seeing the same patterns repeat, case after case, inside every kind of system.
From practice to
system
The Neuro Inclusion Index
Built to take what I was seeing case by case and turn it into something an organisation could actually be measured against.
Now
Consulting & system redesign
Working directly with leadership teams to close the gaps the index finds - the part where the Index actually becomes change.
ALSO WRITING
MANIFESTO
From Disorder to Divergence
A case for moving neurodivergence from something to be managed to something systems are built around.
MEMOIR
Live the Life You Love
The personal story underneath the professional one - why this work was never going to be optional for me.