The NHSE National Contract for Autism Peer Support Workers
Imroc was awarded the NHSE National Contract for training Autism Peer Support Workers and Peer Support Worker Supervisors across England in 2022 and 2023 having supported earlier work co-producing training materials and curriculum planning.
Health Education England (now NHSE) has developed an autism workforce strategy which includes the development of highly-specialist autism teams. These teams offer enhanced health services directly to autistic people in the community, providing specialist diagnostic, and focused, time limited, aftercare support services for people with autism.
The Contract
The NHSE contract requires 200 Peer Support Workers with lived experience of autism to be trained as Autism Peer Support Workers across the NHS and non NHS services. In addition 100 supervisors have been trained along with the peers themselves.
It is recognised that peer support roles can make a significant contribution to new and emerging autism services and NHSE has undertaken a substantial piece of collaborative work with Imroc in the writing of new training in context of the existing capability framework. The new training identifies the skills and the capabilities required for a new role of Autism Peer Support Worker.
The focus of the new Autism Peer Support Worker roles is for autistic people to provide support to other autistic people, using their own lived experience to support those who are experiencing health and care challenges
Imroc celebrates that Autism Peer Support may also extend to carers and parents of autistic people. Carers may be employed to support family, friends and carers of autistic people using services. Therefore Autism Peer Support is not only being prepared for the NHS workforce but also for voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations.
The offer for Peer Support for Autism is sizeable across England and the UK. Imroc has counted many hundreds of large and small organisations that offer individual and group peer support in localities cities and regions. Many organisations are networked with the National Autistic Society.
Imroc is aware of the privileged position it is in with the unique opportunity to train Autism Peer Support Workers and Supervisors across England. We aware that across the country there are already advertisements seeking employment for trained ImROC Peer Support Workers within specialist autism teams.
Whist Imroc is excited about this work we would and will never seek to minimise the commitment that organisations already show to offering individual autism peer support whether that is offered by someone trained or not but where and when appropriate Imroc would love to engage with autism organisations across England that provide Peer Support and may be interested in more formal training.
Mid-Point Evaluation
A mid point evaluation of the training programme has been shared with NHSE in early 2023 with the following highlights
Feedback from trainers, trainees and organisations employing trainees demonstrates an early positive impact of the training. The report includes personal stories and reflections of those involved to illustrate the felt impact of engagement in this project.
Central to the design, delivery, receipt and evaluation of the training is coproduction. Bringing together lived experience, educational experts, peer support experts and autism expertise; acknowledging that people bring expertise from many different experiences, and valuing everyone’s contribution through generative and appreciative conversations – and underpinning everything with research.
Although training is crucial it delivers greatest positive impact on people’s lives when offered in conjunction with support to the teams and organisations in which people will work. The opportunity to receive this type of support can be funded by the grant from NHSE which is allocated to each Autism Peer Support trainee.
The Autism Peer Support Worker Training Team
The Imroc autism training team predominantly comprises of people who identify as neurodiverse. Over 90% of Imroc trainers have either a formal diagnosis of autism, are family or carers of autistic children or family and carers of autistic children with a diagnosis themselves. All trainers bring experience and expertise from different aspects of their lives, as trained teachers, managers, campaigners and health professionals.
ImROC’s Autism Peer Support Worker training has been developed through co-production. The work to create contemporary training opportunities is led by the Autism Training Team with the lived experience of being autistic valued and celebrated. The Autism Peer Support Worker training programme has been produced in partnership with Imroc and is unique in its offer.
Celebrating Success and Sharing Stories
The Imroc evaluation of the delivery of the NHSE contract and establishment of the training team has brought together a wide range of life stories and lived experiences.
The delivery of Imroc Autism Peer Support Worker Training is creating new partnerships new friendships and a very real set of human connections. Imroc has invited its partners to share their stories and over the next few weeks we will add blogs to this introduction.
Case Study: The Autism Training Team Delivery of Work
The Autism Peer Training Team are a talented and diverse group of individuals who are either autistic or neurodivergent, family members of autistic individuals, or both. Each member of the team brings something unique to the training environment, and we utilise experiential knowledge to ensure we are flexible and adaptive to the different needs of each cohort.
The Work We Do
Central to our work is our Autism Peer Support Worker Training – this training is dynamic and continually evolving with the everchanging landscape of the autism community. Establishing understanding around what Autism Peer Support looks like, how it differs and just how vital this is for autistic people and their families runs through every project, every interaction and invitation.
We work to identify opportunities for connection and partnership to explore how we may extend our offer of autism peer support training into areas most in need, but which require something a little different.
Providing training for individuals to step into peer support roles is just one aspect of our work. We complement this with an offer to organisations to enable them to prepare for and consider the ways in which they will integrate autism peer support workers into their existing teams and workforce, and how they will provide support through supervision adapted to the needs of an autistic person. This may be through our own defined team preparation and supervision training, or through more bespoke and targeted offers.
Through all of our work what is most important is bringing about change, reducing the inequalities faced by autistic people and empowering autistic people and their families to have a voice in discussions about their futures.
We have trained..
171 Peer Support Workers
63 across 22 NHS Trusts
108 across 38 Voluntary/Community organisations
62 Peer Supervisors
39 across 17 NHS Trusts
23 across 15 Voluntary/Community organisations
Testimonial from a Trainee
“The Autism Peer Support Worker Training was the first training course I have attended in my career where I felt I could fully show up as my authentic self and have my needs met, whilst in a learning environment. It was enriching to meet like-minded people, and collaboratively develop our understanding and toolkits for supporting peers with autism. The resources shared with us in the sessions have been invaluable in my peer support work, and will no doubt continue to be as I meet more peers who will benefit from the these in the future. The course leaders were friendly, knowledgeable and supportive and created a safe environment for us to learn as a group and share our own experiences.”