The Government has promised to tackle long diagnosis waiting times in the new autism strategy for England, after successful campaigning from National Autistic Society supporters. This strategy represents the biggest investment in England’s autistic people ever.
The strategy promises to:
- Invest £10.5 million into finding new ways to reduce diagnosis waiting times for children and young people
- Invest £2.5 million to improve the quality of adult diagnostic and post-diagnostic pathways and diagnosis waiting times
- Increase public understanding of autism with a long-term, nationwide initiative
- Provide £18.5 million to prevent autistic people from falling into mental health crisis and £21 million to local authorities to help people in mental health hospitals back into the community
- Improve understanding by training education professionals, job centre staff and frontline staff in the justice system.
Read the five main things you need to know about the autism strategy here.
