Spotlight on the Autism Sub-Group
The Autism sub group was officially relaunched 2024 after a break in operation of a few years. We relaunched with a fantastic AGM, that had speakers with lived experience talk to us about their challenges with eating. The following year, was another great success, with the Autistic Girls network educating us on neuroaffirming care. Since then we have delivered excellant speakers on topics such as Autistic burnout, PDA, Sensory differences, highly restrictive intakes and ARFID, plus much more. The depth of discussion within our webinars and peer sessions has highlighted both the complexity of the work we do and the value of coming together as a professional community to learn and reflect. All these talks are available to our members to watch in the Education section, along with many other valuable webinars and presentations.
If you’re not already a member of the subgroup, you can join by signing up for either the paediatric or the mental health specialist groups and then membership to our subgroup is £10 per year. Click here to Join: http://www.bda.uk.com/my-bda/paying-group-membership.
Membership Fee – FAQs
Why are you introducing a membership fee?
While we have been proud to offer free membership, the lack of funding has limited our ability to develop resources and expand our education and training offer. The £10 annual fee will help us sustain and grow our activities, including webinars, peer support, subsidised conferences, and research awards.
Why now? This year has shown the positive impact the subgroup can make, particularly through our webinar programme. We want to build on the quality and reach of these activities, but doing so comes with unavoidable costs.
What will my membership fee be used for? Membership income will be reinvested directly into the subgroup to support education and training, events at reduced member rates, ongoing webinars and peer support sessions, and the development of resources and research opportunities.
What will I gain from paying a membership fee? Members will continue to receive free access to our webinars and peer support sessions. (Non-members will need to pay to access future webinars, peer support sessions are only available to members).
Members will receive discounts to future study days.
Membership to the group will allows you to broaden your network of professionals who share the same passion to improve care for autistic people. You can do this by coming along to our meetings and joining discussions on the subgroup webpages. We share lots of articles, news, videos, learning opportunities, resources and help promote the voice of those with lived experience. We are really proud to have renewed the BDA position statement, which is available on the BDA website for public access. BDA Autism Position Statement - BDA. As well as making contributions to latest edition of the dietetic manual, and the paediatric manual were made, and later this year we hope to develop clinical guidelines.
We would love you to join the group and help us spread excellent practice. You can do this via your members only section of the BDA website under “my groups and branch”.
We would also love to hear your views, which you can send to the committee at [email protected] or start a discussion thread on the website.