UK National Autism Bill

The National Autistic Society (NAS) here in the UK have announced that The Autism Bill has made it through its final parliamentary stage and will now become the Autism Act. The Act is the first ever disability-specific law in England.

This is great news. For the first time in the UK, there will be a formal structure and strategy that addresses many of the concerns of adults with autism or Asperger syndrome, (AS).

As visitors to aspergermanagement.com will know, I have been working with the Careers Service at Nottingham University on a Transitions Programme for students with AS to conduct an effective job search and then prepare them for workplace entry. The project was submitted to the government as part of the consultation process of the strategy and we are currently awaiting feedback.

The Autism Act started out as a Private Members Bill, drafted by The National Autistic Society (NAS) and taken forward by Conservative MP Cheryl Gillan. The Bill was backed by a coalition of 16 autism organisations and had overwhelming parliamentary support, being backed by all the main political parties.

The good news about this I feel, is that all the mainstream political parties in the UK are now committed to this initiative. Whilst government cutbacks as a result of the recession may mean that not as much financial resource can be expended on the strategy (at least in the short term), there will be funding on an ongoing basis going forward.

I intend to push and promote the Transitions Programme mentioned above as hard as possible to ensure that the content and the lessons learned from it are implemented as a widely as possible throughout the UK Higher Education sector.