Autism Symposium 2020

AUTISM – EVIDENCE INTO PRACTICE

There are evidence-based intervention and management strategies for autism spectrum disorder; why is it so hard to get them to all the families and individuals who need them?

What are the barriers and the methods to overcome them?

This conference addresses this “implementation gap” – both in the UK and internationally.

We have leading speakers addressing key aspects such as developing the evidence-base; the science of implementation, particularly in enduring conditions  such as autism; national policy and locality evidence-based commissioning; philanthropy; and clinical practitioner experience on the ground.

The day will focus particularly on the example of the Paediatric Autism Communication Therapy (PACT) as an evidence-based early intervention that we have tried extensively to implement both in the UK and internationally. Our experience in doing this will be shared as the second theme of the day. But the difficulties in the lessons learned are applicable to any evidence-based practice in autism internationally and we wish to draw out these general lessons for us all.

One of the key lessons is that healthcare and education implementation requires many partners acting together; from clinicians, teachers, researchers, policymakers, charities, managers, commissioners - and not least “service users”, families,  caregivers and autistic individuals themselves, who are often highly and effectively involved. We are delighted that all these groups are strongly represented at this symposium.  We have learned when all these groups work together there can be a real activation for change – our goal is to progress the conversation from this symposium to bring about a step change in autism intervention to  benefit all children and their families.