The Autism Act 2009: Developing specialist skills in autism practice

This booklet is produced for the Department of Health and advises how practitioners can enable greater access to health and social care by people on the autism spectrum.The article was produced to respond to new legislation 'The Autism Act, 2009' which requires statutory training in autism to be undertaken by health and social care services. Autism is defined as a sensory perceptual impairment which presents challenges to the specialist practitioner to use 'reasonable adjustments' under the Equality Act 2010. The article explores creating a sensory/communication support package through the use of the Sensory Behaviour Scale (Harrison and Hare, 2004) and the development of a communication profile. The exploration of how to understand the communication function of behaviour is explored with a discussion of the use of the Motivational Assessment Scale (Durand, 1986)