Interprofessional Training in Autism: Impact on Professional Devleopment and Workplace Practice

Training the workforce is recognised as a key component in raising the quality of services for children and adults on the autism spectrum and their parents and carers. There is now a huge range of training opportunities offered by and within health, education, social care and the voluntary sector plus a wealth of resources on the autism spectrum. In contrast, there is relatively little written on what constitutes good quality training for a particular audience and, more particularly on what impact such training has on working practice. Most training programmes ask for feedback from participants immediately following a training event or programme, but rarely seek to examine how students have used the knowledge and ideas in their future practice and careers. This paper attempts to fill this gap by asking students, line managers and funders for their views on what difference the training has made and what barriers there might be in following ideas through. The Editors would welcome other papers from others who have evaluated changes made to practice following training events and programmes.