Supporting Autistic Girls 4 – Post Event Access

Dr Becky Quicke is an experienced Clinical Psychologist and Founder of Autistic Girls, who has been assessing children and adults’ mental health since she qualified in 2005.

She worked in the NHS for 10 years until she set up her own private assessment and therapy practice for children, adults and families in 2015.

In 2019 she focused on providing psychological assessments of adults and children in the family courts and continues to deliver those services for her other service, Family Law Psychology.

Whilst having supported many autistic/ADHD children and adults throughout her career, it has been since her daughters’ diagnosis of autism and an understanding of her own neurodivergence, that she came to realise that more specialist assessment services are needed to understand and diagnose autistic and ADHD women and girls.

Autistic Girls is a specialist autism and ADHD assessment service for girls and women based in Knutsford, Cheshire. Becky and her team help them understand their differences and feel good about who they are. Their assessments are not tick box exercises but instead are thorough, neuroaffirmative and meaningful. They support families who want to feel confident that their daughter will be seen beneath the ‘mask’ and want to go deeper into their understanding of their daughter’s strengths and needs. The all female Autistic Girls multi disciplinary team are skilled at assessing girls and women, with many of them being neurodivergent themselves and/or having neurodivergent children. For more information visit www.autisticgirls.co.uk or www.autisticwomen.co.uk.

Carly Steel is the author of “Consulting autistic young people on their personal happiness” published in the Good Autism Practice journal.

Carly started her career as a teacher in a specialist college, supporting autistic young people. She completed her masters degree in autism, passing with Distinction before going on to coordinate alternative provisions for a large charity across the East Midlands and London.

Carly became a Director and Head of Education for an outdoor alternative provision, which allowed her to follow her true passion; working more closely with parents, young people and staff.

Carly is autistic herself, providing a unique and rare insight into the autistic experience.

Cathy Wassell is CEO of Autistic Girls Network, author of “Nurturing Your Autistic Young Person” and neurodivergent mum to two neurodivergent young people of her own. She runs workshops, training and mentoring programmes for parents, education, health and social care professionals and corporates.

“Nurturing Your Autistic Young Person” is the book Cathy wishes had been written when her teens were going through the diagnostic process. With numerous 5 star reviews on Amazon, it’s a handbook to read all at once or dip in and out, covering all aspects of what you need to know to provide a nurturing and neuro-positive environment for your autistic young person.

Catherine Leggett’s background is in engineering and technical roles, and they have also worked on gender equality projects for women in science, engineering and technology.

Catherine is an experienced autism and employment consultant and trainer and has worked with employers and employees nationwide as a specialist optimising autistic people’s strengths at work since 2014. Catherine also speaks at conferences and events, and regularly contributes to articles and interviews to promote the recruitment, retention and progression of autistic people in the workplace. Catherine was diagnosed autistic in 2015 and has an adult autistic child.

In their spare time, Catherine enjoys advocacy and building peer support networks for adults to bring together autistic autism professionals, parents, jobseekers, creatives, artists and other professionals to address some of the shortfalls in the support available around diagnosis, accessing healthcare and services and generally living well as an autistic person. Cath is a passionate about their work, bringing communities together and bridging the gaps between parents, autistic adults and support professionals.

Dr Annie Clements has over 40 years’ experience in working with both young people, families and neurodivergence.

Annie has vast experience of feeding into local and national policy and strategy and supporting research across several universities. She sat on forums within local government for 20 years feeding into national platforms in relation to instigating change for the ND community.

Annie created the social enterprise Autism & ADHD when she became a fellow of The School for Social Entrepreneurs, which proved to be ground breaking in the way it developed support with her approach being replicated by other organisations, due to the positive benefits and outcomes of working in this way. Her staff team, as well as being highly trained professionals, are all neurodivergent.

Annie lectures at universities both locally and internationally, was recognised for the passion she has for purpose driven business and was one of 25 CEO’s globally to be interviewed as part of a drive to involve corporate sector in following the ethos of Purpose in Practice. This led to her being invited to be a Fellow of the RSA. It is estimated that her direct work with families has impacted on close to 10,000 families but taking into account the professionals and business’ she has trained, this figure is much higher and this will continue to grow as the organisation reaches more communities globally. All that said, the most important thing to Annie is her family, who themselves are all ND, and are the driving force behind everything she does. This makes her well placed to deliver her session today.

Amanda Hind has a unique perspective of autism as she is autistic (diagnosed as an adult), her children (young adults) are autistic, she has specialised in teaching autistic children, and she is an autism researcher.

She is a highly experienced teacher; and has taught in mainstream primary and secondary schools, special schools, and alternative provisions. She is also a qualified SENCo, and was a SENCo in a mainstream secondary school. Although no longer school-based, Amanda still enjoys working with children and young people, and specialises in SEN tutoring for children of all ages, and mentoring for neurodivergent adults, young adults, and teenagers. She is also a study skills tutor for autistic/ND university students receiving DSA.

Amanda is an experienced autism speaker, trainer and consultant, having travelled across the country to deliver talks and training sessions on a wide variety of topics to a range of attendees, including parents and professionals from education, health and the care sector.

Laura Hellfeld is an AuDHD (Autistic, ADHD) health care professional, consultant and advocate. Their education includes a Masters in Nursing (RN, MSN), licensure in Public Health Nursing (PHN) and certification as a Sleep Consultant. They work as an independent Nurse Consultant to support the neurodivergent community and educate other care professionals to understand their unique support needs.

Laura specializes in PDA, distress behaviours and self-care like eating and sleep. They are also Associate Editor of the upcoming magazine publication, Autistic Revolution.

Viv Dawes is a late diagnosed autistic (PDA) and ADHD advocate, trainer, consultant and author.

Viv has over 25 year’s experience of working with vulnerable people, who were mostly neurodivergent, including as a Senior Practitioner in the NHS, managing teams of forensic drug workers in prisons. She also started and ran a community based addiction recovery programme.

Viv has written a number of books including two books about autistic burnout – that have been endorsed by many, including Professor Tony Attwood. She is currently writing a book with her son, about autistic burnout for young people, that will be published next year.

Phil Wroe is a teacher specialising in working with children with SEN, and children who are “looked after” by local authorities.

Most of her work is one to one teaching and assessments to identify areas of educational need. Phil also provides training for schools on areas such as dyslexia and literacy difficulties and has been doing this for the past 13 years.

Phil is also an autistic lived experience advisor and founded her company Squarepeg SEN – Support and Education for Neurodiversity this year.

Becca Lory Hector is a seasoned neurodiversity and disability advocate, consultant, and author with a robust career dedicated to promoting inclusive and diverse work environments.

Based in Maine in the USA, Becca is the founder of Truly Inclusive Leadership, where she collaborates with leading organisations to enhance their cultural competence, support the integration of neurodiverse employees, and foster psychological safety. Her strategic programmes, keynote presentations, and advisory services have established her as a prominent thought leader in the fields of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB).

In her role as Director of Training at the Association for Autism and Neurodiversity, Becca has demonstrated exceptional leadership by managing educational activities for national conferences, overseeing significant budgets, and guiding a team of professionals. Her work focuses on creating shared learning experiences and supporting disabled employees through tailored training and mentorship. Becca’s commitment to advancing neurodiversity is further evidenced by her involvement in research projects with the Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health (AIR-P) at UCLA and the Autistic Adults and Other Stakeholders Engage Together (AASET).