Improving services and working towards achieving Autism Accreditation 

Currently, at our inpatient hospital within Kent and Medway NHS Trust, we have a steering group dedicated to improving our service for autistic people. We are currently working towards being accredited by the National Autistic Society. We like to call this steering group NASA (which stands for National Autistic Society Accreditation).   

This group consists of experts by experience (our service users), members of our multi-disciplinary team (MDT), administration teams, quality improvement teams, and family liaison service. The group’s primary aim is to improve the experience for autistic people within our service. 

The group has worked on many projects as part of our overall aim. One of these was to review the various passports used by autistic people in our service. These passports include:  

1. Autism passports  
2. Communication passports
3. Sensory profiles 

We began to ask questions about how people used these resources:

• Who was reading them?  
• Were the individuals themselves leading on what was being written and shared about them?  
• Were they able to use these resources and share them or take them to appointments where they would be useful?  

We were concerned there were simply too many documents, some with overlapping information, which may have limited their effectiveness.  

Many of our Care and Treatment Review panels had asked similar questions, so the “combined passport project” began.
 

The steps we took

The combined passport project group consisted of Aimee Daly (Speech and Language Therapist), Sian Jackett (Assistant Psychologist) and Sandy Vale (Lead Occupational Therapist), which meant we had a range of disciplines and expertise involved.

We needed to take several steps to launch our new and improved passport. These included: 

• collecting feedback on the current passports 
• developing the template for the new passport with an expert by experience (an autistic person in our service) 
• gathering more feedback from the individuals for whom the new passport was designed and making any changes as a result 
• working with each individual to write their passport, collaborating with all project members to complete the various sections of the new passport 
• collecting feedback from people on their new and improved passport 
• supporting individuals to take charge of using and sharing the passport 
• collecting feedback from the MDT, professionals involved in people’s care, Care and Treatment Review panels, and friends, families and carers about the new passport 
• rolling out the template trust-wide.

Conclusion  

We found that the new passports had a big impact on those who helped develop them. The most significant impact was the individual’s involvement in deciding what they wanted to include and their ownership over its use, which we improved from our old passport system.  

We initially worked closely with two individuals to develop and use their passports. We asked them questions before and after the creation of their new passports. Both individuals had (at least) doubled the number of professionals they had shared their passports with after developing their new one.  

They both rated their new passport as more helpful and easier to use than their previous multiple passports. Both had copies of their personal passports and knew where these were and how staff could access them, which was not the case before. 

Quotes from our wonderful feedback: 

'Combining the three passports gives a clear picture of A and clearly shows that they have been instrumental in developing it. For those supporting A, whether in a hospital or a community setting, it clearly sets out how to support them.' 

'It helps others understand me. It helped me understand myself better when developing it.'

We were overjoyed with the feedback we received.  

However, the project was not without its challenges.  

Firstly, it takes time to complete the passports, and working as a three-member team made this project difficult. We are already thinking of ways to embed this passport as part of the admission process so that all staff are responsible for developing them.  

Secondly, the passport currently exists only as a paper or Microsoft Word version, which is tricky if someone does not remember to take the paper version with them. We are currently working on having an e-version of the passport, making it even more accessible and looking at ways to access the template through the staff intranet to increase its use trust-wide. 

The combined passport project has been an overall success, and we continue to work hard to integrate it into our service.

One day soon, we hope anyone who could benefit from it can access and use the template.​​