This is a dedicated hub for all things neurodiversity. On this webpage, you will find resources, research and case studies which you may find helpful. Please do use and circulate how you see appropriate.
This is focussed on a two-year pilot focusing on autistic adults and adults with sensory needs who access support within Mental Health secure services across Leeds and Bradford.
The evaluation report written and researched by Gary Blake, West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership and Gabby Keating, University of Leeds.
Autistic and ADHD poets, writers and a photographer co-produced this poetry anthology to try and bridge the gap of understanding between neurodivergence and neurotypicality.
An Autism and ADHD language guide for professionals to support neurodivergent colleagues.
When it comes to referring to autism and autistic people, there are usually two ways of going about it. The first is person-first language. This is where someone would say “they have autism” or “people with autism”.
The second is identity-first language. Instead, of saying someone has autism, they say that someone is autistic. A couple of common examples are “Luke is autistic” and “autistic people”. Identity-first language is something that many within the autistic community use quite frequently. They see it as a logical choice; autism is something that’s part of you, rather than something you carry around.
Watch this helpful video on the right langauge for neurodiverse people.
People with lived experience of Autism and ADHD co-produced this zine around language used in relation to neurodivergence.
An Autism and ADHD language guide for professionals to support neurodivergent colleagues.
Leeds Autism AIM has worked with neurodivergent people to put together a guide that explains how to make information accessible to neurodivergent people in a number of ways. This free document has examples of good and bad practice and a number of links to making accessible info, as well as general tips you can use.
Leeds Autism AIM, West Yorkshire Police and other local organisations have coproduced a free autism alert card. Initially, the card is available for autistic adults in Leeds to use. The card can be used to help communicate your needs and how being autistic affects you in stressful situations.
In Calderdale, the SEND Reference Group, Tough Times Reference Group and Calderdale Young Commissioners have created this two page guide on what they as young people feel is important to them when having an assessment. Each young person has undertaken some kind of assessment during their lives for various different reasons, several members having had an autism assessment. The guide lists what they think should happen pre-assessment, during an assessment and after an assessment.
At the West Yorkshire Neurodiversity Summits, we worked with a lived experience representative at Touchstone to create a visual accessibility guide for attendees to help them understand what type of surroundings, sights and experiences they would likely to encounter when attending. We received a good amount of positive feedback from this work with this being shared as a good example across the Partnership.
Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust has produced some helpful Easy Read guides for people coming for an assessment for autism or other neurodevelopmental disorder.
Watch a video about the commitments the NHS has made to autistic people from the NHS Chief Operating Officer, Sir David Sloman. This includes improving the diagnostic pathway and post assessment support, reducing health inequalities and improving access to, and the quality of, mental health inpatient services.
West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership Autism Champion Dr Conor Davidson writes a blog for the Royal College of Psychiatrists about Autism.
People with lived experience of Autism and ADHD co-produced this zine around language used in relation to neurodivergence.
Find out more about reasonable adjustments on our 'Supporting neurodivergent people at work' webpage.
Small changes to health services can help people to feel comfortable and able to get the help they need. Sometimes these are called reasonable adjustments.
Reasonable adjustments are changes an employer makes to remove or reduce a disadvantage related to someone's disability. For example:
Reasonable adjustments are specific to an individual person. They can cover any area of work. Watch this animation for more on reasonable adjustments at work.
These reasonable adjustment twin guides for employees and employers include useful information on how reasonable adjustments can support neurodiverse colleagues in the workplace.
These videos show how important adjustments are to neurodivergent people in the workplace and how managers can support staff to be the best that they can be.
Listen to a podcast of an autistic person, a family carer and a GP discussing changes that can be made to appointments to make them work well - Supporting autistic people in primary care
Watch a short video about how health can be improved by making reasonable adjustments in local services (called primary care services) from our Medical Director for Primary Care, also a GP, Nikki Kanani.
Rosalind who talks about her journey as an autistic woman. She talks about phobias and sensory needs as she grew from a young person at primary school to an adult who has travelled to parts of the world.
NHS Learning Disability and Autism Advisory Group member Adrian, shares his story of how he expresses himself through artwork and his hope that society will become more respectful of others.
In Joe’s video, he speaks about how been autistic makes him unique and has given him to drive to achieve lots of things.
Find out how NHS England is working to improve the quality of mental health support for all autistic people, both close to home and if needed in hospital in Sarah Wright's blog.
NHS England has published its five-year autism research strategy for England.
Why a research strategy is needed - Change is needed to ensure health policy and clinical decisions about the care provided to autistic people is consistently based on the best available scientific evidence. Co-ordinated and strategic action is needed to improve our ability to act with urgency without undermining our ability to measure the effectiveness of healthcare changes made. This research strategy sets out the first steps that need to be taken to build better evidence-based healthcare for autistic people in England.
Making health services better with people who are neurodiverse.
This report can be described as a small-scale action research project which set out to gain a deeper and richer understanding of how to support the development of kinder, more compassionate, and more effective health services with people who are neurodiverse.
Ask, Listen, Do is a national NHS initiative that aims to improve experiences and outcomes for children and adults who are autistic or have a learning disability, their families and carers. Ask Listen Do came from the poor experiences people reported when giving feedback, raising concerns and making complaints.
Ask Listen Do resources are designed to:
You can read more about Ask, Listen, Do on the NHS website.
Ask Listen Do resources for people and families
Ask Listen Do resources for organisations
How to raise a concern or make a complaint
You can contact us at NHS West Yorkshire ICB for concerns or complaints about primary care, secondary care, such as hospital care, mental health services, out-of-hours services, NHS 111 and community services like district nursing.
Click here to find out more about how to raise concerns or complaints to us.