New report highlights improvements in UK autism care

Public Health England has published a report highlighting the efforts being made to improve the standard of autism care offered by the NHS.

The organisation's learning disabilities intelligence team has published its third autism self-assessment framework, which measures how local services are performing, and indicates that progress is being made towards quality standard goals.

It was shown that since the previous report in 2013, more areas are including autism in their local Joint Strategic Needs Assessments, with autism diagnostic pathways becoming more widely available and more local authorities having a recognised pathway for people with autism to access a community care assessment.

Moreover, since the 2014 Think Autism adult autism strategy, 45 councils have implemented training for frontline staff, support workers, social workers or council staff, while 43 councils have made changes to make services more inclusive for people with autism.

Dr Gyles Glover, co-director of Public Health England's learning disabilities team, said: "By publishing this data, we aim to stimulate conversation and promote joint working amongst local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and partners to improve support for people with autism locally."