Level 3 Award in Working with Autistic Individuals

This course is built around two widely used, regulated units that together form the core of many Level 3 autism awareness and support qualifications across the sector: Unit 1, Introductory Awareness of Autistic Spectrum Conditions, and Unit 2, Understand How to Support Individuals Who are Autistic. Together, these units move a learner from genuine foundational awareness — understanding autism as a spectrum, the areas of characteristic difference, and common behaviours — through to genuinely practical, person-centred support skill: communication, environment, person-centred planning, safeguarding, and support that changes appropriately across a person’s whole life.

Written for registered managers and staff across Supported Living, Domiciliary Care and Ambulance Services, this course goes well beyond the brief awareness-level treatment autism receives under Standard 16 of the Care Certificate, covered in the dedicated Care Certificate course elsewhere in this series, and stands as a genuine, thorough foundation for the more specific Level 3 Awareness of Supporting Autistic and Individuals with Learning Disabilities with their Sexual Health course, also elsewhere in this series, which assumes exactly this depth of understanding already in place.

Across eighteen lessons we cover the areas of characteristic difference covered in Unit 1 and Unit 2 alike (communication, social interaction, restrictive or intense interests), autism as a genuine spectrum with wide individual variation, sensory processing and associated conditions, understanding behaviour as communication, responding to distress and anxiety, how autism affects individuals and families, discrimination and its compounding effect, the legal and policy framework, person-centred planning, involving families and advocacy, adapting communication and the physical environment, supporting learning and independence, keeping people safe from harm, and changing needs across the whole lifespan, with examples throughout from Supported Living, Domiciliary Care and Ambulance Services.