Autism Trainer Manual: Autism Awareness Training Covering a Level 2 Qualification Unit

This manual contains five training sessions which are designed to cover the learning outcomes for the “introductory awareness of autistic spectrum conditions” health and social care unit. It is designed to go with the book An Introduction to Supporting People with Autistic Spectrum Conditions (Hatton and Broughton, 2011). A copy of the book is included with the training manual.

Sessions are between one hour and 25 minutes and one hour 50 minutes in length. The total teaching time is seven hours and 25 minutes. Each session is described in terms of an overview, learning outcomes, assessment criteria (for participants in the session) and materials needed.

A detailed session plan, with additional materials such as handouts, activity sheets and PowerPoint slides and presentations is also provided. There is also a CD-Rom which contains electronic copies of the resources and two video clips. At the end of each session there are questions (based on the assessment criteria) which are for trainers to use in support of learning and assessment.

Activity sheets are generally well designed, with opportunities for participants to focus on either people known to them or individuals described within the training materials. This allows the trainer to both provide information about a particular area and then to support participants to think about how that information might relate to an individual.

Each session contained a single page handout, referring the participant to the relevant section of the book by Hatton and Broughton (2011). 

Handouts were therefore limited to just some key points and contained little detail.

The sessions are:

• Understanding the concept of autism as a spectrum.

• Understanding the areas in which people with an autistic spectrum condition characteristically have difficulties.The first two sessions cover chapter one of the book. For some participants, the inclusion of some information about different theories which have been used to explain why people with autism spectrum conditions experience these difficulties may have been helpful.

• Understanding the behaviours of some people with an autistic spectrum condition. This session focuses on supporting participants to think about the areas of difficulty identified above in relation to understanding challenging behaviours. I think that this might prove a difficult session if people did not already have some basic knowledge around challenging behaviour. It might have been useful here to mention Positive Behaviour Support (PBS). PBS is a broad approach which encompasses understanding reasons why behaviours may occur, taking into account an array of factors and interactions, e.g. between the person and their environments (Hastings et al., 2013). This information is then used to inform interventions. Without knowledge of this broad approach, participants may struggle to understand the likely influence and impact of autism spectrum conditions.In addition to some of the autism friendly approaches suggested in this session, it may also have been useful to mention the SPELL Framework (www.autism.org.uk/living-with-autism/strategies-and-approaches/spell.aspx). This was developed by the National Autistic Society and focuses on structure, positive approaches and expectations, empathy, low arousal and links as pillars of good practice (Beadle-Brown et al., 2009).

• Understanding how to communicate effectively with people on the autistic spectrum.This session encourages people to use visual communication and to think about some of the communication barriers people with autism may experience.

• Understanding how to contribute to the person centred support of an individual who has an autism spectrum condition.This section builds on the information presented in the two previous sessions and emphasises the need to get to know the individual and to provide good and consistent support. There is emphasis on the importance of listening to families and using the knowledge of the person that families will have developed over the years.This section briefly outlined a variety of approaches. Reference to PBS and the SPELL framework could again have been useful additions. Person-Centred Active Support (Ashman et al., 2010) might also have been included here as a way of developing person-centred action.

The training pack achieves a reasonable balance between emphasising the need to think about each person as an individual (with their own unique profile of skills and difficulties) and thinking about the main areas of difficulty experienced by all people on the autism spectrum (described in terms of the triad of impairment plus sensory issues). It is written clearly and provides a wealth of opportunities to link learning with experience of people with autism. It could have provided a little more theory and included some other person-centred approaches.