The government has acknowledged how important it is for certain people to understand how limited their understanding of autism actually is. While most professionals know something about autism, they do not necessarily understand how autism affects people
Without awareness and understanding of the condition recognising autism and communicating appropriately is very difficult.
The recommendations from the 2010 Autism Strategy ‘ Fulfilling and Rewarding Lives’ include:
- We recommend that autism awareness training should be included within general equality and diversity training programmes across all public services (2.8)
- It is important that adults with autism and their carers are involved in developing and delivering training (2.9)
- We believe it is essential that autism awareness training is available to all staff in the criminal justice sector (2.14)
- We believe it is essential that autism awareness training is available to everyone working in health and social care (2.16)
- We believe that autism awareness training should be part of the core training curricula for doctors, nurses and other clinicians (2.23)
Those who work in health and social care need to be able to identify potential signs of autism. They must understand how to adjust their behaviour and the way they communicate with adults who have autism. The ‘Autism skills and knowledge’ list was produced by Skills for Care (2011) and was developed with the aim of improving the awareness of autism and skills among those working in generic health and social care services. The list is intended to enable 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.
The Autism Strategy aims to increase the understanding of autism by improving autism awareness training for all frontline public service staff, in line with the needs of their job, and developing specialist training for staff in health and social care.
Part of autism awareness training is getting the trainees to view things as an autistic person would see it. This helps to create a much better understanding and enables carers to give more effective support to those with autism.
Contact LCE Training Services to find out more about our autism awareness certificate.
Tel: 07902 416 089