David Bryceland, Project Officer within Transformation Partners in Health and Care, shares the results from their survey which explored the needs of the homelessness workforce in supporting autistic people experiencing homelessness.
As both services and wider society become more aware of neurodivergence, it’s prevalence, and potential impact on our lives, there is a need to shine a light on the intersection between autism and homelessness.
Recent research conducted by Oxford University suggests that 12.3% of people experiencing homelessness are autistic, compared with 1-2% of the general population. This statistic was, for us, both surprising and motivational in driving us to learn more about it. Why is this the case, and what can we do about it?
Armed with this research, and our own observations from working in frontline services, it became clear that we needed to find out more about the needs of the workforce, including their skills and confidence in supporting autistic people experiencing homelessness in London. We wanted to better understand how confident and informed people felt, both in their own knowledge and in their understanding of local pathways for this population. Additionally, we wanted to better understand the training needs of the workforce, the adequacy of provision for this client group, and most importantly, to capture how London's services and systems could change to better meet the needs of autistic people experiencing homelessness.
My colleague, Scarlett Wright and I began by speaking to professionals at all levels across London and England to better understand their approaches and ways of creating pathways of support for autistic adults within a complex and often hard to navigate system. We heard from commissioners and frontline practitioners alike, hearing about their successes and challenges, alongside hearing about the journeys of the people they supported.
We knew we needed to hear from a wider pool of professionals to truly measure the scale and depth of work needed. We distributed a survey designed to capture the challenges, alongside examples of good practice, that professionals who worked with those experiencing homelessness in London were facing, and their experiences navigating the system.
The key findings and recommendations from this report were:
- There needs to be greater recognition and awareness of the prevalence, presentation, and support needs for autistic people (and for those experiencing co-occurring autism and homelessness), coupled with nuanced understanding of the spiky profile of needs and presentations.
- Flexibility and accommodation of autism should be adopted within services, both in the environment and in interactions with practitioners.
- Changes to services should be co-produced with autistic people.
- Gender-informed approaches should be embedded within services to increase understanding of women’s experiences of autism and homelessness.
- There is a need for commissioners and funders to better understand the needs of autistic people, thereby improving the identification of, and commissioning for appropriate outcomes.
- There must be structural changes to pathways for support, including access to rapid and flexible diagnostic assessments, specialist open ended support and resources, preventative support, amendments to priority need and statutory duties, and appropriate accommodation and pathways.
- We need a joined-up approach throughout the system – there should be joint working and sharing of information between services, and pooled funding.
- Recurrent in-person training must be implemented for all staff about autism and homelessness.
We hope that this report catalyses support for systemic change around autism and homelessness and provides an exciting opportunity to work together to improve the systems we work within.
