The National Police Autism Association (NPAA) was founded in 2015 to provide autism support to police officers, staff and the community. Our external-facing work was prompted by a need to provide all police officers with autism awareness training and to share best practice – at the time those Forces which provided training tended to include […]
By Kleio Cossburn @autismCJS My interest in autism and the Criminal Justice System stems from my time as a police officer. One of my roles involved interviewing suspects and preparing court files. On the occasions where I dealt with autistic suspects, it appeared to me that communication difficulties might have been a contributing factor to their […]
By Charlotte Henry A follow on from: My son – disregarded by society. I have always been protective over my brother – throughout my parent’s turbulent relationship we sought solace from one another and throughout the years of bullying he endured I sought to protect him, often turning up unexpected when my high school broke […]
By Sally Halsall It was every mother’s nightmare, screaming for help but no one came to help. My lovely vulnerable son. I knew there was something wrong and the only person who could save him was me. But he did not seem to listen to me when I tried to steer him in the […]
By Dr. Hugh Asher I recently completed a three-year project delivering learning disability and autism awareness to staff across the Criminal Justice System for the charity KeyRing. During this time, I delivered a one-day training course to over 1600 front-line staff in the Criminal Justice System (CJS). The training was co-delivered each time with a […]
My experience of Autism Spectrum Conditions is different to others that have written this week. Mine is that of a parent to a child on the spectrum, no doubt a position I share with many others if national statistics are to be believed. My journey started 7yrs ago when my eldest daughter started to self-harm […]
I only got diagnosed a couple of years ago ; it came about as a result of a few issues happening at the same time. Firstly id been googling autism as I thought my Dad was displaying symptoms, then the more I read it, the more I thought oops this is actually me. This happened […]
Being given a diagnosis of Asperger’s was no surprise to me. I’ve always known, you can’t possibly have a 20 year old son with Asperger’s and not realise you’re on the spectrum too. I used to be an operational Police Officer and never felt the need to obtain a diagnosis, but in recent years I […]