Better health and social care outcomes for people with autism

Every health or social care service should be ready to provide services to people with autism, or to their families or others who care for them.

The Autism skills and knowledge list has been developed jointly by Skills for Care, Skills for Health and the National Autistic Society to help enhance awareness of autism and improve skills among workers in generic health and social care services. This work is part of a wider range of on-line training resources funded by the Department of Health to increase awareness and understanding of autism across all public services.

The list enables individual workers, or services and teams, to work out whether they have the knowledge and skills needed to provide a good service to people who have autism.

It will also be useful for people who are arranging or providing training to workers. This may include people with no knowledge and experience of autism, as well as those with existing knowledge about autism including lived personal experience of having autism or being a family carer to a person with autism.

The list was developed in consultation with over two thousand people including health and social care professionals, commissioners and managers and around 150 people who have autism and over 800 family carers. They took part by completing a survey, attending focus groups or commenting on draft materials.

Professionals in the training field may also find an accompanying document, Implementing the autism skills and knowledge list through staff training and development, useful in helping them to co-ordinate future activity in this area.

A further product Getting it right for people with autism - the research behind the "Autism skills and knowledge list", that describes the process followed to develop the skills list is now available. 

Qualifications

The following units are part of the the Level 2 and 3 Diplomas in Health and Social Care (HSC)

• LD_210_Autistic_Spectrum_Conditions
• LD_310_Autistic_Spectrum_Conditions
• LD_510_Autistic_Spectrum_Conditions

Useful links

Department of Health

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/SocialCare/Deliveringsocialcare/Autism/index.htm

The Department of Health funded a series of on-line training resources and booklets to increase awareness and understanding of autism across all public services. A number of organisations have produced a range of quality materials to enable frontline staff to better recognise and respond more effectively to the needs of adults with autism. For more information, follow the links below:

 
Royal College of Nursing
http://www.autism.org.uk/~/media/NAS/Documents/Working-with/Autism-strategy/Royal-College-of-Nursing-How-to-support-people-with-autism-poster.ashx

Royal College of GP's
www.elearning.rcgp.org.uk

Royal College of Psychiatrists
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/training/cetchome.aspx

Social Care Institute for Excellence

October SCIE guide, 'Improving access to social care for adults with autism':

See also SCIE's Social Care TV videos on working with people with autism:

www.scie.org.uk/socialcaretv/topic.asp?guid=36fd44de-5a56-4a18-9224-18f23b72c7c5

British Psychological Society
http://www.bps.org.uk/events/e-learning/e-learning

University of Oxford
www.healthtalkonline.org/Autism/

National Autistic Society 
http://www.autism.org.uk/en-GB/Working-with/Autism-strategy/The-autism-strategy-an-overview/The-Autism-Strategy-Implementation-Project.aspx