The theme of this year's forum was Learning Disabilities and Autism: Why it Matters for Inpatient CAMHS. The Hampshire & Isle of Wight, Sussex, Kent & Medway CAMHS Provider Collaborative hosted a panel of EbEs who have recent experience of accessing a wide range of specialist services, including Psychiatric Intensive Care Units, Specialist Eating Disorder Units, General Adolescent Units and day services at various stages of their autism diagnosis.
They shared their lived experience of services and talked about the importance of looking through the individual autistic lens at every stage of the patient journey, and how this is important to both the young person and parent/carer. The EbEs also answered questions to help inform and improve other services.
The Provider Collaborative champions co-production within its services with a key priority to support services to be 'autism friendly'. This relates not only to the service environment, but also to the care and treatment approaches used, as well as supporting staff to understand individual autistic experiences to achieve best outcomes.
At the conference, the EbEs spoke about how small changes and adjustments can make a huge impact and difference to a child or young person's experience and outcomes of treatment. They also stressed the importance of family involvement in a young person's care and shared top tips on how to ensure that the parent/carer voice is heard when one or both parents identify as being autistic.
This includes how vital it is to consider individual approaches to communication and involvement, to remove any barriers to them being meaningfully involved in advocating for their autistic child or young person.
Dulcie, an EbE, said: "Some EbEs crafted an abstract for the QNIC conference, and our bid was accepted, - we created a presentation on neurodivergence in inpatient settings."
