Safe Places Team, Wrexham Council Social Care Department

Actions and outcomes

The ‘Safe Places’ team in Wrexham is a group of individuals who conduct assessments on services, organisations and companies across the authority of Wrexham, to see if they are suitable to offer a ‘safe place’ for vulnerable individuals. One example of a ‘safe place’ would be a place to sit for someone who has mobility issues or is experiencing anxiety or stress. A safe place is a quiet place to rest if someone is feeling overwhelmed, where they can be supported to contact a carer or family member if required.

 

In order to upskill their knowledge and to offer more inclusivity when they complete these assessments, the team decided to complete the Autism Awareness training and become recognised as an Autism Aware team. Linking with the Commissioning and Planning Team, they completed the online autism training.

 

Using their new knowledge and skills surrounding autism from the training, the team developed a leaflet to advise businesses and services on small changes they can make to ensure their environment is autism friendly for autistic individuals. This leaflet is raising awareness around autism and the team are encouraging businesses to complete the awareness training themselves.

 

The team intend to continue to increase awareness around autism and to encourage services and organisations to put in place an Autism Champion.

Feedback

The team made the following comments about the Autism Aware training:

 

  • “This was really good training. I can see how this can be used in our work as Safe Places Assessors, to help businesses understand how to support autisitic people”
  • “I like the video option as we could talk about things as a group, which helped to open up discussions and develop our understandings better”
  • “I enjoyed this training. It will be really good for others to do it, as it really makes you understand some of the challenges autistic people face”
  • “This is very refelctive of my normal day. I have autism and can relate to the information in the video. Knowing I would have a ‘safe place’ to go to would make me feel more confident to go into the town centre”

Lessons Learned

Training has been a really effective way for helping the team to improve their practice and to ensure inclusivity. This training has provided the team with the knowledge and skills to raise awareness in their local authority through the production of a leaflet. The Safe Places Team is going to monitor how the leaflet is received, ensuring that it is kept live and updated.

Information

Health Board:
Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board
Local Authority:
Wrexham
Integrated Autism Service:
North Wales IAS
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