I thought I had likely done such a good job of masking in front of him that he would reject the suggestion as ludicrous. At the end of one of our sessions, and with my husband there for moral support, I asked the “hand on the doorknob” question: “Do you only do diagnostic assessments for children, or do you diagnose adults as well?” with transition from one activity to another, a focus on details and unusual reactions to sensations. Commissioners need the right skills and tools to develop services that work for autistic people. To improve their capabilities, the Local Government Association ( LGA), Skills for Care and the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services ( ADASS) will roll out their qualification for commissioners who work with autistic people and people with a learning disability to a further 120 NHS and Local Authority commissioners. In addition, we commissioned Skills for Care and the National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi) to develop guidance to help commissioners identify local demand and develop the right services for autistic people. This guide is published alongside the strategy. review the results of our proposals to improve the treatment of autistic people under the Mental Health Act and issue our response in summer 2021 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.

We will have achieved the targets we set out in the NHS Long Term Plan for reductions in the number of autistic people and people with a learning disability who are mental health inpatients by 2024. We are also seeking to modernise the Mental Health Act and will bring forward changes which would mean that autistic people are only admitted to inpatient mental health settings if absolutely necessary. These changes would mean that autism alone is no longer a lawful basis for ongoing detention in inpatient care and would enable people in inpatient care to be discharged as soon as they are well enough to leave. Professor Happé says, “If you think about situations where any of us have had to put on a bit of a mask, if you imagine being in a job interview or something like that, it's pretty stressful and it's tiring, and for how long are you doing that? Probably for half an hour or maybe an hour. Autistic people tell us that the masking that they're having to do is going on 24/7.” conditions because of behavioural risk factors such as physical inactivity and poor dietary preferences, and are at greater risk of violence, injury and abuse. As the boys moved through school, from time to time I wondered whether my older son actually was also on the spectrum, but then I would think of how much he was like me and attribute his challenges to being shy and intelligent. When he began to struggle with social issues and relationships at high school and sought support, he was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (under the DSM-4 definition).Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how people perceive, communicate and interact with others, although it is important to recognise that there are differing opinions on this and not all autistic people see themselves as disabled. With an estimated 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK – approximately 1% of the population – most people probably know someone who is autistic. In addition, there are an estimated 3 million family members and carers of autistic people in the UK ( National Autistic Society). A growing number of children and young people are being diagnosed as autistic, with special educational needs data suggesting that 1.8% of all pupils in England now have an autism diagnosis. In spite of this, we know that many autistic children and young people are still having poor experiences within school, are not reaching their potential and are struggling in the transition to adult life. The APPGA’s The Autism Act, 10 Years On report showed that autistic children and young people often find it difficult to get the help they need at school due to poor understanding of autism among education staff. It also highlighted that less than 5 in 10 were confident about supporting autistic children and young people, and this can result in missed opportunities to help children reach their potential or prevent children’s needs or distressed behaviour from escalating. Flo I wanted this film to tell you that. But it’s been really hard to go, I’ve always been kind of acting. Flo Yeah, all through my childhood and my teenage life and my adult life you’ve been so accepting, I’m going to cry, of everything that I am.

For some time, I sat with my self-diagnosis. I didn’t seek a formal diagnosis because I couldn’t see how it would be beneficial; I was too old for any kind of intervention or support. I was also concerned it would affect my career, given the stigma and stereotypes around autism I had experienced so often in my children’s lives. 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. 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.continue to promote employment support programmes, including Access to Work and IPES to autistic people who are at least a year away from work We will set measures of success for each of the priority areas in the strategy to make sure we can effectively monitor progress in year one and beyond, being clear about what we expect to achieve by 2026. This is important in knowing and demonstrating that we are making a difference to autistic people and their families’ lives. By the end of this strategy, we want life to be fundamentally better for autistic people, their families and carers. We want to be able to demonstrate that we have transformed autistic people and their families’ lives by: Improving understanding and acceptance of autism within society We want to reduce the health and care inequalities that autistic people face throughout their lives, and to show that autistic people are living healthier and longer lives. In addition, we want to have made significant progress on improving early identification, reducing diagnosis waiting times and improving diagnostic pathways for children and adults, so autistic people can access a timely diagnosis and the support they may need across their lives. Building the right support in the community and supporting people in inpatient care While we have made these important improvements, there is still much more to do to ensure that autistic people across the country have equal opportunities to the rest of society, access to the services they need to have good health and wellbeing and to participate fully in their communities.

Both of my sons were clients of the same psychology practice, the ASD Clinic, which had been recommended to me as the experts in autism when we moved to Melbourne in 2014. After much encouragement from my family, I decided to broach the subject of my own autism with my younger son’s psychologist – the practice principal, with whom we had spent a great many hours. First, your undiagnosed autistic child will not be protected by the absence of a diagnosis 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.” As my children grew, I continued to learn about autism but it was a long time before I really processed the fact that females can be autistic. It was even longer before I began to accept that perhaps the many similarities between my own and my sons’ thoughts, behaviours and challenges were due to a shared neurotype rather than just shared genes.

Extensive research using a variety of different methods and conducted over many years has demonstrated that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine does not cause autism. Studies that were interpreted as indicating any such link were flawed, and some of the authors had undeclared biases that influenced what they reported about their research (2,3,4).