Autistic UK promotes the importance of lived experience, co-production, and the involvement of autistic people in the design of services and the delivery of training. 

  

We are currently re-designing platforms and seeking funding to ensure that our work can continue. 

  

We need to develop ways of including lived experience in not just policy but across all service development. We see  this co-productive approach embedded within the Welsh Governments New Code of Practice on the Delivery of Autism Services, and has been evidenced by the involvement of autistic adults in Welsh Governments  policy development  (You can read more about this here –Our Work in Wales)  

  

Autistic people’s views need to be heard not just at a national level but also at a local level in local steering and planning groups.  

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Some local authorities embrace this representation, but others are behind the times, and over the coming months our organisation will be contacting local authorities to promote the importance and value of lived experience and quoting our current work as examples of good practice . 

  

In the New Year we will also be launching a network for autistic and neurodivergent people who are sitting on steering groups and strategy groups so we can learn from and support each other and continue to come together as a community  

  

There is increasing research that shows that Autistic people are best equipped to discuss matters pertaining to Autism  

(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5368186/).  

 

Even Autistica, the largest autism research charity in the UK, has stated that there is insufficient research being made into the social barriers and solutions required. 

  

Nearly all current and planned research undertaken through established academic research channels in the UK is concerned with early medical intervention and DNA research. 

 

At Autistic UK we believe that there should be nothing about us without us and we support participatory and co-produced research which looks at the issues that our community feel are important  

 

Find out more about the research Autistic UK have been involved in here