Since the Autism AIM – Mental Health Equity Project launched around three years ago, one of the main parts of its’ work has been to provide autism awareness training for a range of professionals in West Yorkshire. This includes working with independent advocates.

As they are part of The Advonet Group, an independent advocacy charity, a good starting point was to provide in-house training for their advocates. The training has been delivered online and in-person, with dozens of advocates working across a range of services attending.

It has covered topics such as communication needs, sensory needs, burnout and mental wellbeing. The training also covered autistic experiences in health and social care, as well as intersectional autistic needs. All training sessions to date have been delivered by autistic members of the Mental Health Equity Project team.

Feedback

At the end of each session, advocates were invited to give feedback in an online survey. 92% of participants found the training either very useful or somewhat useful. Many of the advocates’ understanding of areas such as social interaction and meltdowns and shutdowns had grown since receiving training.

As a result, the advocates can use their training to better support autistic clients in all advocacy areas – Care Act Advocacy, Community Advocacy, Health Complaints Advocacy, Independent Mental Capacity Advocacy and Independent Mental Health Advocacy.

Here are just some of the quotes from people given via the survey:

“Really liked the use of statistics and referencing in this as well as book recommendations throughout.

“Training was laid out very clear and spoken at a good pace.”

“Some really useful tips about language used, communication profile and general understanding.”

“It was a good reminder of things that I have picked up from experience – but also by putting them in a training package will hopefully help to ‘sharpen’ focus on things like co-occurring conditions.”

Next steps

The Mental Health Equity Project’s plan from 2021 to 2025 is to deliver the same training for advocates working across Yorkshire. They have also provided autism awareness training for other professionals, including social prescribers in Leeds and Bradford.

By the end of this year, we will have provided training for 145 advocates. To date, we have also trained 62 social prescribers.

With this training, the hope is that professionals will be better placed to meet the mental health needs of any autistic adults they work with. If training for The Advonet Group’s advocates is anything to go by, the work is well on its’ way to achieve its’ outcomes!

Find out more about the Mental Health Equity Project by: