Publish date: 8 April 2022
West London NHS Trust marked World Autism Acceptance Week last week, (28 March to 2 April) raising awareness about autism and supporting people living with autism.
Throughout the week we shared resources on social media, tackling myths and common public misconceptions about autism, for example, that ‘all autistic people are math geniuses’ and ‘everyone's a little bit autistic’.
The aim of the week was to widen the understanding of autism and its acceptance in society.
With this in mind we shared facts from the charity Ambitious About Autism, these facts highlighted that mental health conditions are more common in people with autism and that being autistic is part of someone's identity.
We also shared information about the Trust’s Speech and Language Therapy Team (SLT), based in Ealing.
The service which comes under Ealing Community Partners provides support for children, aged up to 18-years-old, who live in the area and have problems with speech, language and communication.
The Ealing team were busy marking the awareness week by sharing some of their own resources.
These included videos about what autism is and how the team can help develop patients’ communication skills.
Dr Deborah Bird, who leads the Autism and Social Communication Assessment Team, also created two videos discussing how we assess autism and how the assessment process works.
You can watch all the videos on the Ealing children's Services YouTube channel.
As well as sharing our own videos, we also signposted to local organisations/charities in the Ealing area who help support people living with autism, including Ealing Anchor Foundation and The Log Cabin Charity.
The week concluded with a special football event on Saturday 2 April, World Autism Awareness Day.
The event was called Seeing is Believing and was held at the Featherstone Sports Centre.
The event was aimed at girls aged six and over, women aged 16 and over, as well as autistic children and their parents.
At the event there were professional football players on hand to teach youngsters how to play.
There's still plenty of resources available to view on the Ealing SLT Facebook page from the week.
For adults with autism the Trust offers a special autism assessment service in Ealing. You can find out more about that here.
During WAAW the adult assessment team ran two focus groups co-facilitated by people with autism in order to give feedback on their experience of the service.
The Trust aims to use this information to improve the service.
We're proud to stand with autistic people and to support them in the lead-up and after their diagnosis.
