Conferences Q&A
Why do you have training products and services aimed at professionals?
There are more than 700,000 autistic people in the UK. By changing the attitudes, understanding and practice of professionals we can help to make society work for autistic people. We do this by providing opportunities for professionals to access information and continued professional development through our training and conferences. Autistic people and people with personal experience of autism are central to everything we do and are involved in all aspects of our work.
Do you always include autistic speakers and expertise?
Our conferences proudly represent a wide variety of perspectives on autism. We ensure that a significant proportion of our speakers are autistic to ensure the autistic voice is dominant and widely represented.
Do you offer a fee to speakers?
We have a minimum fee that we offer all speakers. All speakers have access to the conference and ‘on demand’ content after the conference.
How do you decide how much your conference tickets cost?
The price of our conference reflects the fact that we ensure it includes an outstanding programme and speakers. We get very positive feedback from delegates and we know that it is good value for money compared to events of similar quality.
Although the proceeds we generate from our conference is usually small, we need the conference to generate income to help us pay for free services, such as our online community and maintaining up-to-date and reliable information pages on our website, as well as our policy and campaigning work.
Can autistic people or their families attend?
Anyone is welcome to book a place and attend our conference. The day is aimed at professionals; however, we know the programme may also be of interest to autistic people or family members. Many professionals booking onto our conference are autistic or have a family connection to autism.
We do offer a discounted rate for autistic individuals and their families/carers who are not attending in a work capacity in order to ensure they can attend. This rate covers the running costs of the conference.
Can I view the content of the resources from the conference without attending?
We live tweet our conference, using our @autismpractice account. We encourage delegates to also join in tweeting should they wish, meaning that the conference hashtag offers a strong insight into the day.
We also share any professional practice articles that have been written by the speakers on our website and through our social media accounts. There is free access to view articles in our professional practice section. We also have newsletters for professionals, which people can sign up for below to receive articles and information free of charge.