By the end of the strategy, we will have also delivered significant improvements to the provision and quality of community support, including social care, mental health and housing support. This will prevent more autistic people from reaching crisis point. For autistic people who really need care in inpatient settings, we want to show this is of high quality, therapeutic and tailored to their needs, and as close to home as possible. 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.

improving autistic children and young people’s access to education, and supporting positive transitions into adulthood We will take action to support children with SEND, including autistic children and young people in schools, as we move out of COVID-19 restrictions over the academic year 2021 to 2022. So far, we have published a range of guidance to support remote education, including specific support for children and young people with SEND. We recognise that some autistic children and young people have benefitted from access to remote learning which can be personalised and accessed flexibly and we will continue to personalise support for individuals as we move into recovery. We have also provided a hub of guidance and resources for families, teachers and other professionals aimed at supporting autistic children and young people during COVID-19. Our commitments in the first year We’ve also learned some valuable lessons from the pandemic, from the benefits of flexible working to new ways of providing community support online, and the need to improve data collection about autism so we have a deeper understanding of people’s experiences across health and care services. Scottish Ministers must report each year on implementation of the Act. They have published three reports so far, for 2012, 2013 and 2014. There will be two more reports, in 2015 and 2016. What learning and support is my child entitled to?

We will significantly improve the public’s understanding and acceptance of autism, and show that autistic people feel more included and accepted in their communities. We also want the public to understand how autism can affect people differently, including the difference in how autistic women and girls present, and to help change people’s behaviour towards autistic people and their families. We want many more businesses, public sector services and different parts of the transport system to become more autism-inclusive, so that autistic people can access these spaces and services, just like everyone else. Improving autistic children and young people’s access to education and supporting positive transitions into adulthood

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. As COVID-19 restrictions ease, we will be able to continue making our Jobcentre network more welcoming and supportive to autistic customers. We will continue to upskill staff and increase the number of Disability Employment Advisers to support our Work Coaches. We are also looking at ways of adapting physical spaces and ways of working to better support autistic people. We will be taking this forward through our Health Model Offices, which are Jobcentres that provide more intensive support to disabled people and test innovative approaches to disability employment support. In addition, we will continue to promote the Autism Centre for Research on Employment’s (ACRE) free Autism Employment Profiling Service, which went live in October 2020 and enables Jobcentres to signpost and provide appropriate support to autistic people without a learning disability.Here is a list of resources for those seeking ACT training or who want more direction in what to do next in terms of learning ACT.

All children and young people in Scotland have a number of entitlements - find further information in What is my child entitled to? Related links We are clear that in some areas work will only begin after the first year (2021 to 2022), and in many there will need to be additional actions in the subsequent years of the strategy to fully realise our vision. In some areas work is still in early stages or ongoing so we will wait on findings or further progress before we take action. This includes the National Autistic Society’s research on developing a tailored Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) model and the development of Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training for health and care professionals. Once developed, this can be adapted to other public servants, including the police or housing officers. In other areas like employment, we have work underway to improve support for autistic people but will monitor the full impact of the pandemic to ensure we are continuing to take the right actions. The second edition of Learning ACT was created to pull together all the developments that have occurred over the last decade since the first edition.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. There has been an explosion of research and resources on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in recent years, and for those therapists that are new to this clinical model, the sheer amount of what’s available can be overwhelming. As we set out in the Building the Right Support national plan in March 2015, all autistic people should have the opportunity to participate in their communities among friends and family, and live in their own home or with people they choose to live with. We are clear that people should not be in inpatient mental health settings unless absolutely necessary for clinical reasons, and set out our target of a 50% reduction in the number of autistic people and people with a learning disability in these settings by 2023 to 2024 (compared with March 2015 levels) in the NHS Long Term Plan. Since 2015, we have made progress towards this target, as we have achieved a net decrease in inpatient numbers of 28% as of June 2021 ( Assuring Transformation data).