Maudsley Learning, King’s College London (KCL), and the South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) are working with Health Education England on a national project. This project entails identifying and sharing a range of approaches to support health, social care and public facing workforces across England to use the Core Capabilities Framework for Supporting Autistic People (2019). By doing so, we and HEE hope to improve the provision of high quality training that can improve the lives of autistic people, their carers and families, and staff. This blog explains the project and invites you to take part in a number of ways to help us achieve this goal.
What is it all about?
The project involves reviewing current evidence and practice, mapping existing initiatives against the framework, and creating a repository of information for people to develop their work further in this area. As part of the project, we also want to find out how people use the Core Capability Framework and share a range of approaches to support all health, care and public facing workforces across England in order to effectively make use of it and other relevant frameworks.
The project began in March 2020 and will run until January 2021. We’re excited to be making great progress, with the support of some amazing collaborators including subject matter experts, experts by experience, charitable and private organisations. There are a wide range of deliverables for this project, including:
- A training directory including available evidence-based training provisions mapped against the Core Capabilities Framework
- A gap analysis identifying any workforce groups and core capabilities that are not currently supported through existing training and workforce initiatives
- A systematic review on autism training interventions
- A delphi survey on approaches to training with health and social care professionals
- A repository of resources including guidance materials
- A final detailed report providing an overview of the whole project
- Easy read, lay summaries and high contrast version of all documents
Participating in the project, we need you!
The success of this project relies on hearing from people with autism, their families and carers, health and social care workers, trainers and anyone who might work with people with autism. If you fall into one of these groups then please read on about how to participate!
The project uses a mixed-methods approach with data collection over several stages that you may be able to participate in:
1. An online survey:
Autistic people, their significant others (e.g. family members and carers) and all public facing professionals from any setting, can share their experiences through this survey. The survey asks about workforce and training initiatives relating to autism, with a prize draw for a £25 voucher to be won by 20 lucky participants.
2. Focus groups:
A series of focus groups with autistic people, their family and carers, and staff will take place to gain an understanding of different perspectives and experiences of current autism training programmes. Participants will be offered a £10 voucher for participating, please email Hannah.iannelli@slam.nhs.uk to take part.
3. Individual interviews:
Individual interviews will be help with people, their family and carers, and staff to give us more in depth understanding. Participants will be offered a £10 voucher for participating, please email Hannah.iannelli@slam.nhs.uk to take part.
4. Delphi survey:
These online surveys will glean expert opinion about the application of the Core Capabilities Framework to specific staff groups. The aim is to develop a consensus statement and recommendations about autism-related training gaps and needs.
Click here to participate
5. Training and workforce directory
Our team are scoping the internet and using data gathered from the above activities to develop a directory document detailing initiatives and key information for representative workforces.If you know of any training but are not able to complete the survey at the top then please email us, Hannah.iannelli@slam.nhs.uk.
This project has been given ethical approval by Kings College London- HR-19/20-17744.Should you wish to participate in any of these studies, know of any autism training that you would like to be included in the directory, or you would like to know more about the project, please contact Hannah Iannelli, Hannah.iannelli@slam.nhs.uk.
We also kindly ask that, if you know anyone who would be interested in our project, please signpost them to this blog and keep an eye out for our social media posts!