Hello. Hello. It's sorry. It's Henry Shelford. I am CEO and cofounder of ADHD UK. I have ADHD. And this is our second Global ADHD Conference, and it's wonderful. I'm just absolutely thrilled to be here. Very, very excited. And yeah. Yeah, this is our moment. So we've got a really exciting lineup for you. So we've got well, we're gonna we've brought together a coalition of charities that we're thrilled about. They are yeah. With ADHD Australia, our main organization partner, and then we have ADHD New Zealand, ADHD in Singapore called unlocking ADHD. We have let's talk ADHD from Hong Kong. We have ADHD Europe. So we've all come together to talk, which is an absolutely wonderful thing, something we're very just extremely excited about.

And we've got this, the conference. So this is the so we're live on our main site, also live on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And, surely, Facebook, there seems to be some kind of issue when it went live. So I'm hoping that one of the team is looking at that and will log in shortly. And so the people the good people of Facebook will be able to join us there. But But otherwise, go to globaladhd.com, and you can watch us there. The first session is going to well, there's a later rather. It was ADHD Hong Kong talking about what they're doing in Hong Kong, it's absolutely devastating. We asked the critical question. So what happens if you tell your boss that you've got ADHD? And she told a story of someone who their boss found out.

Not on purpose, and they got fired. Like, it's it's very different, and it's quite, yeah, it's quite something. We've then got professor Weiss, who's one of the preeminent experts in ADHD. So extraordinarily excited about her. She's talking about ADHD and sleep, which is a huge issue for many with ADHD. She's also talking about nutrition. I wanted to show you. So we've yeah. I've got to show you above. So if you look above my head, you've got the Global ADHD Conference talking. And you've got the ability to donate. So do consider donating. So you donate directly. Follow the QR code you donate. Now if you donate we set this up correctly, anyone who donates, their name goes to, woah, like, up here? Nope. Wrong way. Up here. And.

Anyone who donates over 20 pounds gets a confetti cascade on the front. And anyone who donates over 50 pounds gets fireworks. So it would be wonderful if someone would consider trying that. So this part is a sort of celebration of what's about to happen in the next twenty four hours. So this is just a crazy adventure. A twenty four hour virtual conference. Look, and our aim is to bring the best global experts from around the world. The people who are interesting and also have an audience from around the world. Now, we know you can't stay awake for all of it. So we do keep a recording, and it will be going.

We will then, like last year, clip it and put it on YouTube so you can watch each segment as you want. So don't feel like you have to stay out for twenty four hours. I'm hoping not to. So ADHD Australia taking over during our night and putting on some spectacular Well, Kathleen donated 20 pounds caused fireworks. So you are wonderful. Thank you. And, yeah. So do consider donating. Look. That's why we're here. So look. We're ADHD UK. And yeah. Man. And it's I have to say, right, so it's let's we're gonna talk about some of the things we've been doing in the last last year. The yeah. So update for the twenty twenty three conference. This is the first thing to talk about. Panorama. What just an unmistakated disaster and awful thing. So.

For those that don't know, we've managed to avoid it. Panorama did a show on ADHD where they focused on private clinics. God admit, they showed some pretty awful things, but they essentially tarnished all private clinics as bad, and that's a huge problem. And we have wait lists in years. Right? And we have desperate people. And so the only vent is going private or is going right to Choose. And to sort of make that feel like everyone just you just get to buy your assessment is it's outrageous. Now we wrote to them beforehand. We said this is a terrible thing. You mustn't do it, and you must at least have balance. You must We want great assessments. But if you're highlighting that we've got problems, need to.

Balance that out with it. The NHS is not very far from perfect. We wrote beforehand. And as a part of that pressure, the name got changed. And we wrote afterwards, and we put in a serious complaint. We did huge work with a lot of people, some people who were watching would been party less, where we pushed for complaints. That panorama, thanks to you, thanks to the donations people have given to enabling us to sort of promote and push for this, is the most complained about panorama of all time. And we did that to send do a couple of things. One, we needed to make it clearly well known. Right? It was just a terrible thing. And the second is we needed to avoid the contagion, right, of the awful stories that people are just gonna write.

And we'll go into that in a in a second. So that was really a big success. Now the BBC complaint has not been upheld. They've said it is so within Panorama, you don't have to have balance. So you can target a particular area and focus in on it, and they argue, and they have some rights to do that. Now I think they didn't do it with an appropriate balance, even bearing that, obviously. But their executive committee rules that it met the BBC rules. Ofcom is different. Now once a complaint goes through the BBC, Ofcom get to rule. And Ofcom have very clearly said that, well, that you must have balance. And we have been in very kind receipts and pro bono.

Legal work from a very, very large firm who've helped us make our complaints. So we've had a media lawyer help us make our complaint to Ofcom. And it's very clear on talking about lack of balance, particularly proportion to the NHS and across private. And the fact that we are a group with a that has a is, well, I would argue very strongly is disabled, but has a disability category, and so there's a protected group. And so it shouldn't have been done so carelessly, something we also argued for. Now look, what made this incredibly and what's given real legs to our is this the research we did. So alongside pushing for a complaint, we asked for people to do research to do our survey, and over 2,000 did. So Panorama, six people, us over 2,000.

And this chart fundamentally blows their argument to pass. And what it shows is you've got three there, NHS, Right to Choose, and Private. They are a map of how satisfied are you with your ADHD assessment. And Matt, thank you very much. I'm sorry. Is thank you so much for your donation. Obviously, it's on my video, so it came up. So thank you. And I've realized that when we're on there we go. I'll put it on top. This graph shows that the pattern of how valued an assessment is between the NHS, between private and Right to Choose, they are almost identical. So the panorama position of.

There is a terrible problem in private and people are wildly not confident in their assessment. We had a call from someone saying they did not believe their assessment. It was done bad. It was done wrong. I'm not saying there are problems across the piece, but when we look at it, there are problems across the piece, not just private. So when you look at negative confidence of assessments, so the numbers are pretty small for you, but, like, eight percent had a negative confidence assessment for the NHS, seven percent for private, five percent for Right to Choose. So if anything, the big problem of I'm not confident in my assessment is more in the NHS than it is in the private sector.

And in terms of strongly agreed, 90% had a positive from private, eighty eight. And Panorama did not talk to this, and they were wrong. And everyone contributing to our research, and thank you so much for doing that, people donating and giving us money to allow us to push that. So we needed to push it on social media. We needed to tell people about it. We need to make our voice loud on it. We're able to do that with your donations. And that is what the lawyers have gone in with. That's the clear evidence. The yeah. So we'll see. They have to come back to us by December 10. These are the fights. Right. Man. So we had Peter Hitchens. This is the time of the Panorama. And.

It's a huge, powerful lobby which turns to furious as Chris. Does ADHD even exist? Yes. It does, obviously. But, like and then we had other articles come up, people following this empowered by Hitchens. And he actually it was getting set up for me to do a Ted to Ted with him on Radio five, which I was very up for. He declined at the end. But one of the things he was saying to the producers was like, well, look, lots of other people have now written about it. I clearly have a point. So you have that cycle of people thinking, right, I've got a point. So I've written about it, now others, and they drive it themselves. We have to stop this. It's so important. And then we had, over the weekend, Lee Anderson.

He's the Tory deputy chairman saying ADHD is bad parenting. And apparently, from what I can see, he goes around saying to people like, well, what's happening is people are just getting their kids with ADHD, and that means the benefit. Chrissy, thank you so much. Thank you. Confetti is all for you. Thank you so much. That's a big deal, so I appreciate thank you. So any donation counts. You'll go up on the board on the side. You get confetti at twenty pounds or over, and for 50 pounds, you get a full fireworks. Oh my god. Like, so I will be talking with the Conservative Party directly. And what appears from what I'm reading is that he goes around saying, look, they just get their kids with ADHD. I've seen a family with five kids with ADHD.

And that means the benefit cap doesn't apply, and so the financial support they get, the kids are outraged. He uses the fact that five have got a diagnosis as evidence that it's nonsense to his mind is what I can read into it. And it's seventy six percent of ADHD we know is genetically linked. The idea that there's a large family with lots of kids with ADHD in it, you'd I mean, it's not it's not unsurprising at all. And do those people need extra support? Like, why are we the one marginalized group? And I'm not suggesting that other marginalized groups should have to. Why are we the one soft target that people feel they can attack? That it's fine to talk about us, a disabled.

Group, and say and just pederize us. It's completely wrong. Right? But it is what we find. But that soft target then leads us with serious problems in the NHS. Now we're going to be doing something for the big freedom of information. We're going be doing something very public in the next week or so around wait times. We had a hope had a to have it now, but our TV partner wants to do it a bit later. I can tell you will be outraged. But coming up later in a later segment, we're talking to the York Disability Rights Forum where they are fighting. Katie, thank you so much. Katie donated 20. Thank you so much. We're talking to the York Disability Forum. They are so and ICB.

Decided to put in a thing called the do it profile. You are only getting an ADHD assessment if you are at risk of suicide or self and self harm, risk harm to others. You are in family court, and you are at risk of your family being broken up. Only then will they give you an assessment. But it's more outrageous than that, those critical people. So what they did was they stopped their current cue. They said, we are only gonna focus on these people. So they what kind of system says, we will only see you, like, once you are in that state? Suicidal, self harm, your family's getting broken up. Leaving people in Pennery forcing people to get to that state before they get help is outrageous. And who you will see an interview with later.

Have put in a legal challenge. Martin, thank you. That's thank you so much. They put in a legal challenge, and we've been supporting them. And there is an issue of contagion. Like, if they get away with it, we're gonna see that across the piece. We're only oh, just us. Right? And one of the points we've tried to make is people aren't doing this for other mental health conditions, for depression, for anxiety, for but why just us? And Leanne, thank you. It was wonderful doing it. Thank you. Yeah, this is only going be up for my bit, so when I'm talking, by the way. So it's wonderful, and thank you. But so that soft target is a problem. We have to go out and be noisy, and we are noisy. Right now, there is a national patient alert. The absolute.

Failure of NHS supply chain means that we are out of medication. And look, I opt for medication. I'm in this too. Right? Like and I went to Boots a few days ago and said, like, what's like, I hear there this is before. No. The alert's just come out. So like, know, are you gonna have any issues? And they're like, no. No problem at all. And now they do. The lack of information, that lack of but we talked with we've talked with some of the large pharmaceutical companies, and we've been told that they expect this to happen be a problem until December. That what's going to happen is batches of different amounts are going to come in.

So if you're on different milligrams, like, the different ones are going to come in at different times. They're going to be batch produced. So you'll find there'll be a stock of some, not others, and then a stock of that and others. And that's how it's going to work. We'll be putting some more things out, but something like the boot stock checker allows you to find out where stock is. That can be very useful to find the limited stock that is around. In their device that they send around to everyone, woah, fireworks and 50 pounds by anonymous. Well, you are anonymously wonderful. Thank you. I'll tell you one thing. Some of it, I love it. It certainly derails my.

Thoughts. I have to write it right. What the hell I'm talking about now at all times? Ali, thank you so much. I totally derailed myself. Genuinely that's wonderful. Thank you, anonymous. Thank you, Adi. Thank you, yeah, so much. Yeah. So these I have forgotten. The massive supply chain issues. And yeah, the advice. There we go. The advice. Oh, my gosh.

The advice is every GP is supposed to contact you if you're on medication and find out how much medication you've got, how long you've got to run for, and and start to make a plan. And if they need to think about altering your medication, they are supposed to talk to your specialist team and work up a plan. Now we have got the CEO of ADHD three sixty coming later today, and you can put your questions to him. And talking of questions, if you go to globaladhd.com, you'll be able to or go to the adhduk.co.uk and click on the register button. It'll take you to the site. I'm saying that because we had some problems at globaladhd.com earlier today. The and you can put your questions there.

You can post your questions. We'll also be able to see questions we should be able to see questions coming up on social media. The yeah. So GP is supposed to contact you like mine hasn't, I'm guessing yours hasn't. And then they're supposed to contact your specialist team. Specialist teams who it takes months to see, and suddenly they've got to instantly create new medication strategies for all of their cohorts. I mean, it's not going to be possible. And the idea that we can just chop and change our medication is also anyone who's opted for medication, you know it's months of titration often. And getting to that point of stability is a big deal, and to have it just rocked away. But that failure to plan by the NHS, that failure for us to.

Even acknowledge that the plan they put is useless. That is the stigma. Right? That's the fact that we are so badly treated that we're not cared about that allows those kind of things to happen. And it's just it's absolutely outrageous. Like, it's a huge, huge problem. The yeah. On funding, so look, donations, everyone donating it is absolutely wonderful. I can tell you this is hard. So prior to this, I ran, Norman's as secretary, I ran Sarcoidosis UK. And we had an audience of onefour of what we have here and a community of onetwenty turns people impacted. But people are happy to shake a tin and to raise money for a physical disease. Whereas, you know, for ADHD.

Lot of people aren't comfortable talking about it yet. And it's understandable, right, because when you talk to someone and say, I've got ADHD, not only do you have to manage your own ADHD, but you've got to manage their reaction to it. And some people are not gonna react well. And so we have that challenge. We have the challenge of stigma. We people are much less likely to go and do a run or a cycle and do do one. Those people who've done we've some who did a wonderful thing, took a, oh, I've forgotten the name, small vehicle all the way from Jonagroats to from one end to UK and back again. And.

They're amazing. And so there are people doing these things, they are how we live. We get no government funds. This is how we do it. Everyone's individual donations. And so, yeah, that is a wonderful thing. We had a big donor, which has made a big difference. We're grateful for them, but they've pulled out. You're going to have an interview from ADHD New Zealand later talking about the fact that they've had a big fund of full pull, and it is disastrous for them. Same thing has happened to us. It's absolutely disastrous.

We will keep going. We will continue to fight, but we've had to massively change what we're doing. And for anyone who's been emailing the past few weeks, you'll know that it's been tough, that we've not been responsive in the way that we normally are, and it's been very, very difficult. So those donations that you're doing are they mean the world. So thank you very much. And yeah. Right. Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about those sort of big things that are happening. And then, well, then everyone who's worked hard till to find it. So for people who've been who've just joined, say the way to do it is you scan their code there, and it takes you through a system. This conference is bigger and badder and better than than last year.

So we have over 5,000 people registered to come. Last year, we were at around 3,000. Last year, we had people from 52 countries registered to come. This year, it's 96. It's an extraordinary number. We are truly global, and that makes us very, very special in bringing in people from all around the world.