Empowered Through Autism Peer Support: A Trainee’s Journey

This is the story of an Autism Peer Support trainee from Imroc’s Neurodiversity Programme, who transformed their experience into advocacy. What started as a training requirement at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital became a life-changing journey—gaining skills to support others, advocate for themselves, and even share their insights with the Children’s Commissioner for England.

Imroc’s Autism Peer Support training empowers autistic individuals and their supporters with the skills, confidence, and tools to provide peer support that is trauma-informed, strengths-based, and inclusive. It’s about learning, growing, and creating real change in services and communities.

“I was first invited to take part in the training course when Alder Hey Children’s Hospital wanted to invest in support for young people and parents on the pathway to an autism diagnosis. Taking the Imroc Autism Peer Support training course was a requirement for the role, which turned out to be one of the best changes of my life, both personally and professionally.

I have gone from being in job after job really struggling with management failing to support me, and in return harming my mental health and job performance, to being able to take control of my own needs and reasonable adjustments. From the training course, I learned skills to better understand my own lived experience and reframe to support others.

From there, I was invited to join the Imroc team, and I have been working as a Technical and Classroom Support, where I have been supported to increase my knowledge, experience, and self-confidence. From here, I have aided in the development of new training courses and reworking existing modules. I have even expanded into delivering certain parts of the training that I am confident in, and I’ve been able to take on good faith feedback to improve and develop my own style – this has greatly aided my work with Alder Hey.

The most impressive (so far) moment for me came about when I was invited to a meeting with the Children’s Commissioner for England, Rachel De Souza, in which I was able to communicate some of my own lived experiences, the value an autism diagnosis can have on a person, and some of the problems existing institutions have in providing support for autistic people – I even managed to get in a shoutout for Imroc.”