Council staff board autism bus to mark neurodiversity week

The latest news from Central Bedfordshire Council

The Autism Reality Experience visited Council headquarters

Marking Neurodiversity Celebration Week

To mark Neurodiversity Celebration Week, some of our staff immersed themselves in a virtual reality experience to help them understand the challenges that people with autism face on a daily basis.

The Autism Reality Experience, co-produced and created by Training 2 Care, visited us twice, and professionals who work with children and young people had the opportunity to take part in the experience and a training session afterwards. 

The experience allows people to gain a valuable insight into the daily challenges of people with autism when there are situations of sensory overload, in turn increasing their understanding.

One member of staff who took part said: “It was amazing and will really help me to support families I work with going forward. It helped me gain an insight into how young people within our care see the world and how they may feel or react to certain situations.”

Also during Neurodiversity Celebration Week, we partnered with Jigsaw to give pupils at 10 schools an opportunity to attend training about ADHD delivered by the ADHD Foundation. Each school will now have the opportunity to go further to become accredited, cascading knowledge to all staff and work towards a pledge to become ADHD friendly schools.

Our Early Years SEND team also hosted a SEND networking event, attended by around 60 professionals from early years settings across Central Bedfordshire. They were able to listen to two keynote speakers from the Central Bedfordshire Educational Psychology team and The Shared Learning Trust, and take part in four interactive taster workshop sessions throughout the day on inclusion, autism and sensory processing, helping them feel more informed.