Criminal Justice Conference

Our conference schedule this year got off to a good start with a day attended by sixty people on Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and ASD facilitated by Dr Bryn Williams ( Clinical Psychologist) and Shauna Walsh (Specialist Speech and language Therapist). We are pleased to have these two professionals working in partnership with us to offer day conferences like this as well as workshops through our own internal staff training.

Our recent, highly successful Criminal Justice and ASD conference was attended by 157 delegates, four of whom came from Denmark with others from Scotland, Ireland and one from Nigeria – though not on a day trip! The event was run jointly with BILD and we valued their support in this high profile event. Steven Jonas of Jonas Roy and Bloom Solicitors who is President of the Birmingham Law Society this year, was Chairman for the day for us. Inspector Perry Gwilliam of the Metropolitan Police and himself the father of a son with Autism, was a speaker, and shed light on the concerns of both parents and professionals. Sandra Croot is a parent member of autism.west midlands and she shared the experiences that her son Daniel has gone through, which gave a fascinating view of the issues of people with ASD and the Criminal Justice System.

The autism.west midlands Criminal Justice and ASD Forum will be meeting again soon and is working in a truly multi-agency way on strategies to continue to raise awareness of the need for understanding about ASD amongst professionals within the Criminal Justice System.

The new card that people with ASD can carry was launched at the conference. These cards will be issued to individuals with ASD in case they should find themselves in difficult situations. The holders’ details will be kept on a confidential database at autism.west midlands to ensure that they are genuinely allocated and used.