00:00They're laughing now, but many of the gamers in this room have a lonely origin story.
00:10We had a client here who now, at the time he was gaming about 13 hours, 14 hours a day
00:18straight, to the point where sometimes his muscles have actually atrophied.
00:23At one point, Will was racking up 12 hours a day himself, kept behind a screen, despite
00:29paying for NDIS support workers who advertised themselves as helping young neurodiverse adults
00:35become more social.
00:37Unqualified, very young, didn't really know much about autism or mental health problems,
00:43didn't know what was out there, didn't understand how the NDIS worked.
00:48You start to lose a lot of the communication skills, especially if you're talking to someone
00:52behind the screen.
00:53Will lives with 47XYY syndrome, which manifests similarly to autism, but his once waning
01:00social skills have dramatically turned around since starting Ignition, where people game
01:05in person.
01:08They can understand if someone's frustrated, they can understand if someone's sad, they
01:11can understand if someone's happy, because they can see their facial expressions from
01:14that.
01:15There's a lot of emotional connection bonding throughout the whole thing.
01:19There's a number of boys who would come with a phone or an iPad in front of them and headphones
01:25on and don't talk to me, and then they get in there and you can see them defrost.
01:30So much of what makes support quality is that human connection is working well together,
01:35so when providers aren't taking that into consideration, people are then not receiving
01:40the support that they need.
01:42Experts say many participants feel let down by the quality of some support workers.
01:47These are people that we're talking about, these are members of society, they are not
01:50a commodity, it's not a way to make money, it's not how it should be seen.
01:55And it's not an add-on or a luxury to go and meet people in a social setting.
02:01Some of Ignition's participants now have jobs, and they're getting comfortable being uncomfortable.
02:06They're also becoming a lot more outgoing, so after every Friday we'll go to the pub
02:12just over the road.
02:13All barriers have gone, they're just in their element.
02:16A simple activity, but such a relief.
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