“It is really, really important to put aside your own professional judgement, and actually listen to people when they are telling you about their lives”. This is the key advice that Carol Povey, Member of Autism-Europe’s Council of Administration, gives to other professionals in her interview with Network Autism.
In this interview, Povey discusses her work as Director of the Centre for Autism at the National Autistic Society (NAS) in the United Kingdom. “Everything that I do is really about raising standards, developing knowledge, trying to improve things not only within the NAS but across the autism field, so things like conferences, training, accreditation, many of our own quality monitoring, quality assessments come under my remit”.
Povey explains that within the NAS, they want to make sure that “in every area of what we do, staff have a really good understanding of autism, that it’s current, they understand what evidence-based practice is about, and person-centred approaches”.
The interview deals with the challenges faced by autistic women and girls, older people and the need for more specialist services to speed up diagnosis and deal with complex situations.