Christine Flintoft-Smith, Head of Autism Accreditation at the National Autistic Society

We are delighted to be gearing up for a pilot project to help remove barriers for autistic people and families who wish to use public transport and ultimately help reduce social isolation.

The project will involve offering training to transport providers in England, so we can help them develop a better understanding of autism and the often small adjustments that can help autistic passengers. It is one of 12 projects benefiting from a Department for Transport fund aimed at tackling loneliness. If it’s a success, we hope to be able to roll it out to more transport providers in the future.

If you’re a transport provider and want to find out more or get involved, please email: accreditation@nas.org.uk

Why is this important?

Autistic people represent a huge part of our society – at least 1 in 100 people in the UK. And they need to travel to school, work or see friends and family just like everyone else.

But some autistic people can feel extremely anxious about travelling on public transport, in some cases because of concerns about how other passengers will react if they become overwhelmed. Some autistic people are so anxious that they find it hard to leave the house at all.

About the project

Our project builds on our charity’s long history of training and accrediting organisations who show best practice – our Autism Accreditation programme has been running for over 30 years and we’ve accredited over 300 organisations. We have used our experience of working with public sector providers to develop a programme of transport specific autism training for staff. We have also developed a framework to support staff to put their autism knowledge into practice in the best possible way, as they work towards accreditation.

Working with autistic people and their families throughout the project is key to ensuring that we are accurately reflecting and meeting their needs. We will have a variety of activities from focus groups, secret shoppers and autistic consultants all feeding into the process.

We will be looking to work with up to 10 public transport providers, over the course of a year, covering the rail, tram, bus and taxi industries. The project is focused on England at this stage and we hope to work in as many regions as possible, so that we can find lots of examples of best practices.

We will require all transport providers who sign up to our programme to:

• undertake our autism module with all of their customer facing staff - and some key members of the management teams
• reflect on their current provision for autistic people using our framework
• work with our team of advisers to implement any changes needed.

In order to make sure that providers are accessible to autistic people, and to achieve accreditation from our charity, they will be need to show that:

• staff have an understanding autism, the challenges autistic people can face on public transport, and how to support an autistic person if needed
• environmental factors have been considered, such as busy or noisy areas, signage, having quiet areas
• there is Information available for autistic passengers about how to access their service, that this meets our standard for guidance and that this is in an accessible format.

Within the first six months of the project we aim to have our 10 providers identified, held initial consultation with autistic people and their families, arranged secret shopper feedback, and created the training module and framework. We will provide light support to the providers during this first period. In the remaining six months, we will roll out the training and support each provider to hopefully achieve accreditation by May 2023.

Future

We will be evaluating this pilot and its impact on autistic passengers, with a view to hopefully rolling it out to wider transport providers in the future. We hope this will ultimately help ensure more autistic people and their families are able to use public transport to do the things they love, whether that’s meeting friends, travelling to the gym or even going on holiday.

If you’d like to take part in our project, or to find out more, please email: accreditation@nas.org.uk