Trial to start across Buckinghamshire this year.
Ambulance patients who have autism could be helped by a new plan which will assist emergency personnel identify that they are responding to an autistic person.
The ‘Message in a Bottle’ scheme is supported by emergency services across Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire and allows people to store essential information about themselves such as allergies, medication and emergency contact details, in a recognisable bottle that ambulance crews know to look for.
Working with the local NHS Integrated Care Board, autistic service users and the Lions Club charity organisation, South Central Ambulance Service (SCAS) has now developed an extra sheet highlighting an autistic person’s needs.
Autistic people can find it more difficult to deal with emergency situations and to share and process information when speaking with the 999 services.
“As a neurodivergent person and parent to neurodivergent young adults, I’m acutely aware of how differently we feel and experience things in comparison to neurotypical people,” said Allison Milligan, an autistic service user who has helped develop the new addition to the Message in a Bottle scheme.
“Communicating those differences is hard in a calm everyday setting; trying to do so in one of heightened anxiety or pain can verge on impossible. To have an ambulance crew with the ability to access information on how best to communicate with me and learn what reasonable adjustments will make the experience a calmer one, could be lifesaving.”
The new sheet will help SCAS personnel, as well as other healthcare professionals or emergency services, understand individual communications preferences and adapt how they support autistic people. It will initially be piloted in Buckinghamshire this year.
With the support of local SCAS community first responders, over 1,000 bottles have already been distributed locally.
Find out more about the scheme here: www.scas.nhs.uk/message-in-a-bottle-i-am-autistic.
