Publish date: 29 March 2023

It's #WorldAutismAcceptanceWeek, so the Trust is shining a light on some of the on-going work to ensure the Trust is a welcoming and supportive place for autistic people.

Dr Brian Leaning leads the Trust's autism strategy group and has written a blog post explaining some of the main developments over the last two years.

Trust-wide autism strategy

I am a consultant clinical psychologist specialising in working with people with autism and learning disabilities.

Recently I have been leading a small group of clinicians and experts by experience in analysing the systems that are in place through West London NHS Trust to support people with autism and their families.

We have consulted with all the different directorates across the Trust and have spoken to people locally to gain the views of all stakeholders.

We have liaised with our social services, education and private sector partners to benchmark across systems, and we have taken a lead from the recent government policy guidance around supporting people with autism.

This group has now begun to develop the principles which will become our Trust-wide autism strategy, and we are currently working with our colleagues from the transformation team to put together a paper that will be presented to the board in the next few months.

New services to support people with autism and their families:

Over the last two years, the Trust has developed some excellent new services for people with autism and their families.

Two of our newest services include the Acute Autism Liaison Service, which supports people with autism who have been admitted to an acute mental health hospital setting, and the Ealing Adult Autism Diagnostic Service, which has dramatically reduced the waiting times for adults in Ealing who are seeking a diagnosis of autism.

Last year also saw the launch of the Ealing Pre-diagnostic Hub to support all children and adults diagnostic services through referral screening and triaging.

The hub team consists of people who are experts by experience and two clinicians who have co-produced this service to help people on the autism diagnostic pathway and their families, to access the support that they need.

Staff to take part in compulsory autism training:

Subsequent to the new bill that was put through Parliament at the end of last year, all health and social care staff throughout the country must undertake mandatory Oliver McGowan training.

This training is aimed at supporting staff to develop more awareness and make adjustments and adaptations for people with autism and learning disabilities across all areas of our service.

Our Trust has already begun to run this training and has been one of the early adopters of this ‘national culture change’.