Petition Develop a strategy to improve access to autism interventions that target joint attention

There is an increasing amount of research that shows the promise of autism interventions that focus on developing joint attention to improve outcomes for children and adults with autism including the development of language, the development of higher level thinking skills and an increased capacity for emotional regulation.

Mastery of these competencies makes a huge difference to quality of life and life chances.

There are a number of developmental interventions for autism that target joint attention but knowledge of these is not widespread amongst professionals, never mind parents and people with autism.

We call on the UK's Department of Health to begin being accountable to service-user stakeholders by working with key autism researchers, NAS, parents and carers and people with autism themselves to set up a working group to develop a strategy that will enable interventions targeting joint attention to become widely available within each local authority area.