ACoRNS has seen some major successes in the past few weeks with two papers published on some of the work we have been doing together. This success shows how ACoRNS is starting to contribute to the wider evidence base through focusing on the issues and priorities that have been identified by our community partners.
The first paper is by one of our former undergraduate students (Keri Hoy) based on her final year dissertation: ‘Inclusive school practices supporting the primary to secondary transition for autistic children: pupil, teacher, and parental perspectives’. The paper is to be published in a special issue on inclusive education in Advances in Autism later this year, but is already available online. There are some free, full copies of the paper available via this link. If that does not work and you’d like a copy of the paper please do not hesitate to contact Sarah Parsons: s.j.parsons@soton.ac.uk. Keri’s summary of the key findings from her project can also be found here. We’d love to hear from anyone who is interested in using these findings in their work.
The second paper follows from the work of Alice McCullen, one of our parent partners in the community, who sent Freedom of Information requests to all Local Authorities in England to ask about the numbers of autistic children being Looked-After, and whether autism diagnostic status was flagged or shared as a priority within strategic planning. The paper will be published in the prestigious British Educational Research Journal and is freely available to read and download here. Summaries of the key findings can also be found on the ACoRNS website. We will be following up some of the questions raised in this paper in our future work.
Please do not hesitate to get in touch about any of the projects that ACoRNS is working on.