Big drop in autism-specific training for staff carrying out Care Act assessments

43% of councils providing training to less than half of staff who carry out assessments despite Care Act requirement for assessors to be suitably trained.

www.communitycare.co.uk/.../

Parents
  • This is terrible! Anyone who works in health or social care should have appropriate training before they carry out assessments!!!

  • Hi Kitsun

    It's appalling. Sorry l was so flippant in my earlier response.

    Since I originally posted I have spoken to many individuals and worker from CAHMS and then found out that they're not qualified even to do an assessment.

    If someone has trained as a social worker and has a sociology degree and has done a week's course or even a month course on ASD it doesn't qualify them.

    Currently there are no ASD autism specific psychology degrees l can find.

    there's not enough government investment in any area of autism services and so therefore there's a huge gap.

    I have found in conversations with sencos and some teachers that they don't understand aspergers and they don't understand how the system overloads certain children. 

    I'm going to see a local MP very soon regarding this.

    I do think the national Autistic society should be stating on the website that parents especially should be checking qualifications of all people that work with their diagnosed child or undiagnosed child.

    Hope you're well.x

  • Hi,

    It is and that's ok.

    Any professional should stick to their scope of practice and if they are asked to do an assessment or other procedure that they are not trained to do it then they should refuse to do it, until they are given the appropriate training.

    I did my first degree in Psychology and while we covered little bits of autism in it, it certainly wasn't a lot. I think an Autism specific course at University would probably be at PhD level, where you can choose the specific area that you want to study and research. There are however, many autism awareness diplomas available from various providers. I've signed up to do one to help towards my voluntary work with the Beaver Scouts.

    I think perhaps the teachers leave the disability awareness stuff to the SENCOS but ideally all teachers that are teaching autistic children should be given some training to increase their awareness of the needs of those children.

    Yes, perhaps the moderators could action that when they next pop in?

    I'm well thank you. I hope you're well too? 

  • That looks good. Thank you for sharing the link.

  • Yes. I saw that.

    I'm looking into doing that myself. 

    There's some cracking short courses to do isn't there.

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