PDA Action Week

PDA Day takes place on the second Wednesday of May each year.

It’s a day for raising awareness, increasing acceptance and taking action about the PDA profile of autism. Also, to give everyone an opportunity to mark the occasion in their own way and at a time that’s best for them, the week following PDA Day is dedicated to community activities and events.

There’s a different theme each year with resources and opportunities for everyone to participate. It’s a great opportunity to get involved through fundraising, helping to raise awareness or helping the PDA Society.

You can find information about the current and previous year’s PDA Days here:

PDA Day and Action Week 2024, PDA in Our Words: 8th May – 14th May. This year we are releasing initial findings from new research conducted by PDA Society alongside our community. PDA in Our Words highlights the voices of PDA people and their families sharing the profound difficulties they face when their needs aren’t recognised, and the life changing difference it can make when they receive the right support. We invited our community to share what helps them and their family to thrive in school, work and in partnerships with professionals to demonstrate the transformational impact it can make when we adopt a person centred approach. You can read our initial findings here, and the full report and findings will be co-produced over the coming months.

PDA Day and Action Week 2023: 10th – 16th May – focusing on the different ways we can come together as a community to improve understanding, recognition and support for PDA people and their families. We sent regular Team PDA email with actions people can take to help. We launched our Being Understood survey to gather up-to-date information about people’s experiences of PDA and created 2 email templates that can be personalised and used to inform people and professionals about PDA and our practice guidance on identifying and assessing a PDA profile. We launched our PDA community support fundraising campaign with £5,000 in match funding from BigGive and, to close PDA Action Week 2023, we shared the short but powerful videos Team PDA members sent us about the difference hearing about PDA made to them. PDA Day and Action Week 2023.

PDA Day 2022: Research – focusing on promoting high quality research informed by what matters most to the PDA community. We launched a consultation survey asking the PDA community to tell us their top unanswered questions about PDA (which will inform a national call to action for more PDA research). We also ran our “Stepping up for PDA” fundraising campaign (where we’re aiming to take 8 million steps together as a community in May to raise funds for the PDA Society’s research activities). PDA Day 2022 Newsletter.

PDA Day 2021: Professionals – focusing on professionals who work with PDA children and adults. We launched a survey to gather examples of best practice and thoughts on what professionals need to know about PDA and created a new one page letter about PDA that’s easy to share with professionals, two resources about best practice (the PDA community’s voice and the professional voice) and a new page with many examples of best practice. PDA Day 2021 Newsletter.

PDA Day 2020: Support – switching the focus (due to the coronavirus pandemic) to supporting our PDA and wider community with a variety of resources including fun PDA Panda activities to use at home and a website scavenger hunt leading to different sources of support. We also ran a quick survey about life under lockdown and shared the headline results and what respondent’s comments revealed about the impact of lockdown on the PDA community. PDA Day 2020 Newsletter.

PDA Day 2019: Improving Outcomes – a look at what’s working (with examples of good practice across a variety of sectors – all now available in our Resources section) and what’s needed. We also launched a new video ‘Demand Avoidance of the PDA Kind‘ and created PDA Stars for people to award. PDA Day 2019 Newsletter.

PDA Day 2018: Launch of Being Misunderstood report & Positive PDA – results of the largest survey to date about PDA and a focus on the positive aspects of PDA.

PDA Day 2017: Launch of PDA Panda – read all about our panda ambassador here

Previous PDA Days … on previous PDA Days we shared Q&As with experts, new resources and held fundraising events.