Growing in to Autism

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When compared to the decrease in overall inpatient numbers, the data shows that the decrease for people with an autism diagnosis has not been at the same rate. As of the end of June 2021, there are still 1,200 people with an autism diagnosis in these settings ( Assuring Transformation, July 2021). There are several reasons why the number of autistic people in inpatient care has not reduced over this timeframe, including better identification and diagnosis of autism when people are admitted into inpatient care. While we are making progress in discharging people, too many autistic people (particularly adolescents and young adults) are still being admitted into these settings. This is because they often struggle to access community support, including social care, mental health and housing support before their needs escalate. This is not always available at the right time or tailored to their needs. The law also currently allows clinicians to admit autistic people to inpatient care without them having a clear mental health need, which can result in inappropriate admissions. take action to strengthen and promote pathways to employment, such as Supported Internships, Traineeships and apprenticeships, and work to support all local areas to develop Supported Employment Forums In addition, we want to ensure that autistic people can get the adaptations or extra support they need while in work, or to get into work. As government, we will lead the way in becoming a more autism-inclusive employer by expanding our Autism Exchange Internship Programme, which is aimed at providing more autistic people with experience of working in the Civil Service. We will also begin to collect data on the number of autistic people working in our departments to understand further improvements we may need to make to recruit and support autistic people.

We will take action to support children with SEND, including autistic children and young people in schools, as we move out of COVID-19 restrictions over the academic year 2021 to 2022. So far, we have published a range of guidance to support remote education, including specific support for children and young people with SEND. We recognise that some autistic children and young people have benefitted from access to remote learning which can be personalised and accessed flexibly and we will continue to personalise support for individuals as we move into recovery. We have also provided a hub of guidance and resources for families, teachers and other professionals aimed at supporting autistic children and young people during COVID-19. Our commitments in the first year We want to improve how the SEND system works for children with special educational needs, including autistic children and young people, and their families. This will include putting forward proposals to improve early identification of children and young people’s needs, and making sure that the health, social care and education systems work together to support children holistically before their needs escalate. We will be putting forward proposals to improve the system in the SEND review, which we will publish as soon as possible. Some autistic young people need support to get into employment, and we want to ensure more people can get this. That is why we are strengthening and promoting pathways to employment, such as Supported Internships, traineeships and apprenticeships. To make this happen, we are working to support all local areas to develop Supported Employment Forums bringing together employers, Jobcentres, education providers, local authorities, young people and their parents to discuss employment opportunities for young people with SEND in their local areas. These forums will focus local skills provision on local employment needs, publicise opportunities for young people with SEND, including to employers, and create work placement opportunities for autistic young people.

Global prevalence of autism: A systematic review update. Zeidan J et al. Autism Research 2022 March. To improve support for neurodivergent people in prison we are also introducing and testing a new Neurodiversity Support Manager role in a number of prisons, who will be responsible for developing a neurodiversity strategy for the prison, liaising with education and skills teams and ensuring that departments across the prison are aware of prisoners’ individual needs. Prison Governors are also expected to commission education providers to screen a percentage of sentenced prisoners for learning disabilities or learning difficulties, and autism, on reception in prison. As well as improving prison staff’s skills and capability in supporting autistic prisoners, we need to have a better knowledge of how many prisoners are autistic, as this will enable prisons to put in place the right support for people. To this end, we will explore ways of implementing a new data categorisation list on disability, which will include autism, as part of HMPPS digital prison management system. By the end of the strategy, we will have improved the support autistic people can access to find and stay in work. This includes making sure that existing services and work programmes are more autism-inclusive and better able to help autistic people find the right employment opportunity for them. In addition, we will have improved welfare support for autistic people who are unable to work, so they can get the support they need to live well in their communities. We want to develop a better understanding of the inequalities autistic people face and the causes for the gap in life expectancy so we can take the right actions to improve people’s health outcomes. To do so, NHSE/I’s new Learning from Lives and Deaths – People with a Learning Disability and Autistic People programme (LeDeR) will, for the first time, include autistic people. This means that all autistic adults whose deaths are notified to the programme will be able to have a review. contributing to strengthening the ability of the health workforce to provide appropriate and effective care and promote optimal standards of health and well-being for people with autism; and

To improve employer confidence, we will continue to engage with employers through the Disability Confident Scheme. This provides advice and support to employers, and to promote the skills, talents and abilities of autistic people, as well as other disabled people. In recognition of the specific need to improve employer understanding of autism, we are currently holding webinars focused specifically on supporting autistic people in the workplace. We will also shortly publish the response to the Health is Everyone’s Business consultation, which looked at ways to support disabled people and people with long term health conditions at work. This response will discuss employer needs, including information and advice on health and disability that is easier to find and act upon, with design work this year to develop an improved support offer for employers. This new strategy aligns with the existing statutory guidance on implementing the Autism Act for local authorities and NHS organisations to support implementation of the Adult Autism Strategy (2015). This sets out local authorities’ and NHS organisations’ duties to support autistic adults and remains in force, which means that local systems should continue to deliver on existing requirements, including having active Autism Partnership Boards in local areas. This guidance will be reviewed in subsequent years of the strategy, to ensure it aligns with actions we take in implementation plans for years 2 and beyond. Meanwhile, for children, the Special Educational Needs and Disability ( SEND) Code of Practice (2015), continues to place duties on local authorities, NHS organisations and schools in respect of autistic children and young people.We are deeply grateful for Dame Cheryl’s tireless work to improve support and services for autistic people and their families across the country, in particular for the inquiries she led as Chair of the APPGA. The findings from the 2017 inquiry into the education system contributed to our decision to extend the autism strategy for the first time to children and young people. Furthermore, the 2019 inquiry into the impact of the Autism Act 10 years on from its enactment has been vital in the development of this new strategy. We will all remember and are deeply grateful for Dame Cheryl’s perseverance, drive and contributions to improving the lives of autistic people and their families across the country. Joint ministerial foreword With some trepidation, I asked my husband the same question. His response was not what I expected. “I’ve known that since I met you.” We are committed to sustainable improvement of the adult social care system and will bring forward proposals in 2021. The objectives for reform are to enable an affordable, high quality adult social care system that meets people’s needs, while supporting health and care to join up services around them. We want to ensure that everyone, including autistic people, receive the care they need to enable them to live full and independent lives.

Flo I wanted this film to tell you that. But it’s been really hard to go, I’ve always been kind of acting. From the outside looking in, Sandra Thom-Jones was living a successful life: she had a great career, a beautiful home, a caring husband, two loving sons and supportive friends. But from the inside looking out, she was struggling to make sense of her place in the world, constantly feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, and convinced that her challenges with daily life just meant that she had to try harder.In chapter 9, we set out the enablers we will need to work on in the first year to drive forward progress on the actions in this strategy. This includes improving autism data collection and reporting across government, which will be important in determining our progress towards our vision for 2026. In addition, we are committing to improve research on the barriers people face and the interventions that work for autistic people. The implementation plan (Annex A) sets out the actions we will take within the first year of the strategy. The actions we commit to will lay the foundations for what we aim to achieve over the course of the next 5 years. We will refresh this plan for subsequent years, in line with future Spending Review rounds. Lancet retracts Wakefield’s MMR paper. Dyer C. BMJ 2010;340:c696. 2 February 2010 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20124366/) We want all parts of the criminal and youth justice systems, from the police to prisons, to have made demonstrable progress in ensuring that autistic people have equal access to care and support where needed. In addition, we want autistic people who have been convicted of a crime to be able to get the additional support they may require to engage fully in their sentence and rehabilitation.