Helping people with autism get access to care and have a positive patient experience

Our Trust is leading the way in helping people with autism to access treatment.

Many people with autism can experience difficulties with ‘unfriendly’ environments. For example, patterns, bright colours or fluorescent lighting can be distressing. Our new checklist for autism-friendly environments, which has just been endorsed by NICE (National Institute of Health and Care Excellence), helps practitioners find ways to make environments less stressful.

Autism pathway lead practitioner Stephen Simpson said: “Making simple changes to rooms and buildings could be an easy way to help people with autism feel more comfortable and therefore more likely to access treatment.
“An unfriendly environment however could significantly heighten stress and lead to people’s health being compromised. This could be due missing appointments for example and in extreme cases can lead to aggression, self-harm and deterioration in health.
“Even small changes to an environment can make a huge difference. The checklist is freely available for any organisation to use – I’m keen to see it used as widely as possible.”
You can find the checklist for autism-friendly environments in this website’s service directory.