Individual research recommendation details

Recommendation ID

CG128/1

Question

Training professionals:- Does training professionals to recognise signs and symptoms of autism lead to earlier assessment of needs and earlier diagnosis (and by implication reduce morbidity/improve health outcomes) among children and young people with suspected autism compared with no training?

Any explanatory notes
(if applicable)

Why this is important:- Successful training of healthcare professionals in the Netherlands has been shown to improve their ability, confidence and skills in identifying children or young people who need an autism diagnostic assessment. A fully trained workforce can identify the number of children or young people with autism and provide accurate information both for planning individual care and at a strategic level for planning appropriate service provision.
If training improves earlier recognition and referral, this could be of particular benefit to at-risk groups for which there is evidence that autism is currently under-diagnosed, such as girls, and children and young people:
with parents of lower educational attainment with English as an additional language with sensory impairments with intellectual disability. Before extending training to a wider population, it is important to better understand its effectiveness in terms of age, number of children and young people at referral, and time between parents’ concerns and autism diagnosis.

Source guidance details

Comes from guidance

Autism spectrum disorder in under 19s: recognition, referral and diagnosis

Number

CG128

Date issued

September 2011

Other details