Danny attended the Sheffield-wide Autism Partnership Board meeting today.
The purpose of the board is to, “hold to account Sheffield City Council, Clinical Commissioning Group and Sheffield Health and Social Care Trust to implement the requirements of the Autism Act (2009), the Department of Health’s subsequent national Adult Autism Strategy and Statutory Guidance, and the Care Act (2014).”
And its stated aim is to:
“make Sheffield an autism friendly city
ensure the views of autistic people and their families and carers drive change and contribute directly to planning
raise the profile of autism in Sheffield
improve the experience and life chances of autistic people”
It was quite an internal-focused meeting today. A new officer within Sheffield City Council (Richard Groves) has now taken over lead responsibility for the board but wasn’t able to attend.
Board members were expressing quite a few concerns that the different areas of work (called workstreams) that the board is supposed to be delivering are losing momentum. There are plans within the local authority to find funding for a Project Manager role who can support the workstream tasks and help keep the board’s work moving.
I can see it’s difficult – the board involves people from the Council, the health service, voluntary sector organisations and individual autistic people, and trying to make work happen across multiple different ‘sectors’ like this can be really hard and slow.
There was quite a bit of discussion about whether the board is able to properly represent all autistic people, thinking especially of autistic and learning disabled people who may need more support to have their voices represented, and how the separate learning disability board relates to this.
The Autism Festival was also on the agenda. The members that were involved in organising it will be having a meeting to reflect and report with learning points for next time. The feeling was that the activities that were organised went well, but there are concerns about the rushed nature of it.
The National Autistic Society has produced guidance for mental health professionals on how to adapt mental health talking therapies for autistic children and adults; Sheffield Health and Social Care Trust are rolling out this guidance within their services.
It was also noted that the most recent set of minutes on the Autism Partnership Board webpage are from 2022, so they’re going to make sure that the page can be updated with recent minutes and slides/notes from any presentations given to the board.
For what it’s worth, the minutes from the last meeting (2nd April 2025) are here:
And here is the Sheffield All Age Autism Strategy document with a summary of the different workstreams.
Autistic Children and Carers Together (ACCT) 