BU expert gives oral evidence on autism to House of Lords Committee
Bournemouth University’s Dr Rachel Moseley was invited to give oral evidence to the House of Lords Autism Act 2009 Committee advocating for better health and care services for autistic people.
Dr Moseley, a Principal Academic in Psychology, researches health and wellbeing in autistic people, with a focus on mental health, and spoke to the committee on Thursday 24 April to advocate for stronger and more inclusive health and care services that reflect the needs and circumstances of autistic people. Dr Moseley, alongside charity Autism Action, have worked together on a large-scale survey about suicide prevention in autistic people, involving 4,000 people across two phases. This work gave opportunity for the team to work with the House of Lords Committee for a review of the current 2009 Autism Act.
In her written evidence, she said, “Work by academics and charities still shows profound inequalities for autistic people in relation to access to education, employment, health and social care”, drawing on her own research and discussions with autistic people on the struggles they have faced.
Speaking to the Committee when giving oral evidence, Dr Moseley drew from the results of the survey work highlighting the scale of need in people with autism, who reach crisis point with a lack of services to sometimes respond to their specific needs. The survey’s findings are presently under review and in preparation, but some of the data is publicly available as preprints.
Dr Moseley championed the need for specialised healthcare services, pathways and interventions for autistic people, delivered by autism specialists. This includes understanding of diagnosis and building care pathways around the needs of individuals to help them live long, fulfilling lives, contributing to society and pursuing employment opportunities, without barriers created by existing structures.
Using stories of people with lived experience as examples, Dr Moseley was able to show the scale of the issue in the UK, and the need for government intervention to review and update legislation and provide proper funding to train and equip professionals in the health and social care sectors to give autistic people the help they need, when they need it.
Dr Moseley continued, “Although there has been a lot of progress since the Autism Act, we still have so far to go. Issues of suicide in people with autism can too often stem from social factors such as insufficient health and social care; societal stigma; loneliness; financial and employment distress, all things that are completely preventable.
“My message to the government is to think beyond crisis intervention to the prevention of these issues. Systemic changes are needed to help autistic people feel valued, listened to and supported, to help them participate fully in happy and healthy community life. We must move beyond treating people at crisis point and take the long view in improving quality of life for autistic people. An essential part of this is the improvement of diagnostic services, since being undiagnosed and unsupported is associated with poorer wellbeing and suicide risk.”
Dr Moseley also talked about the need for people with lived experience to be brought into the discussion to help co-create and develop such services based on their own experiences.
