Autism Focus - UNDERSTANDING THE AUTISTIC INPATIENT EXPERIENCE in Preston, Lancashire

Over the past year, we have been delivering a bespoke service to autistic inpatients across Lancashire and South Cumbria. Our aims have been to gather autistic people’s views around their admission to hospital, discuss the environment and other factors of their stay, along with their experience of advocacy. Collating their experiences has enabled us to feedback to the trust around the views of autistic people and what they want to happen to improve their experiences, but also the future experiences of autistic people’s admissions to hospital. These experiences will play a key role in the strategic development of services across the Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Trust network to ensure that services meet the needs of autistic people. Simultaneously, we have captured how advocacy has been beneficial for autistic people and what improvements need to be made to ensure that advocacy providers are meeting the needs of autistic people.

We have also delivered a provision for informal autistic inpatients across the Lancashire and South Cumbria region. We have provided support to those who would ordinarily fall through the gap of statutory advocacy provision but who are possibly still vulnerable and in need of additional support from an advocate during their hospital admission.

Our conference aims to:

- Share what we have learnt from autistic people across Lancashire and South Cumbria about their hospital admissions and advocacy

- Empower autistic people to share their experiences and their thoughts, whether positive or critical

- Provide a space for services to reflect on their own practices and whether they are meeting the needs of autistic people

We will hear from keynote speakers such as Kirsty Stuart (Irwin Mitchell solicitors), Gail Petty (NDTi) and Kate Mercer (Blackbelt Advocacy). Our speakers will share information about supporting autistic people in inpatient settings from a legal perspective, and findings from the national review of inpatient advocacy for people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health, learning disability or autism specialist hospitals.