This year’s PDA Day is focussed on professionals from all sectors who work with PDA individuals and their families – including healthcare, education, social care, the law, therapists, counsellors, advocates and policy makers.

By sharing information about best practice, we hope to empower other professionals to recognise and support PDA effectively.

Today we’re launching two new resources:

  • a podcast sharing the professional voice: professionals from a range of backgrounds explain why they feel it’s important to identify PDA and share their tips for best practice. A transcript is also available here

Podcast

  • a video sharing the PDA community’s voice: PDA individuals, families and carers let us know about professionals who have made a positive difference and highlight what they’d like other professionals to know about PDA and what helps. A transcript of this video is also available here

It’s great to see how many common threads there are between these two resources which can be broadly summarised under these five key themes:

We’d like to encourage professionals to sign up for our newsletter – this is a quarterly round-up of news, resources and events relating to PDA for professionals.

A new guide to identifying the PDA profile for professionals involved in autism assessments and diagnosis is being produced by a multidisciplinary group of experts and will be available later this year – please register here to receive a copy of this when it’s published.

Professionals may also be interested in our suite of training options, which we deliver to a wide range of organisations including schools/colleges, local authorities, adult and children’s care homes, in and out patient hospital departments, social work teams, foster carers and therapy teams.

We’ve created a new one page letter about PDA that can be shared with professionals and others to help further understanding and acceptance and improve outcomes.

Further resources and examples of best practice are available on our working with PDApages, including our new best practice page.

In other news, we’re hugely honoured to have been nominated for the Community Organisation Award at The National Diversity Awards 2021! Thank you so much to everyone who has nominated and voted for us.

Happy PDA Day 2021!