We have awarded matched funding of just over £48,000 to Ambitious about Autism (AAA) to support a longitudinal evaluation of their Employ Autism programme. Employ Autism is a series of regional networks which create ‘ecosystems’ of employability support for autistic young people with careers guidance professionals in education settings, employers, Local Authority programmes, Third Sector groups, and autistic young people from the local area.
75% of young people with autism become NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and only 15% believe that an employer would offer them a job. The Employment Autism programme aims to change these statistics and the evaluation will help AAA to build enough evidence to support their key goal of developing a model of employability support that ultimately leads to better outcomes for the autistic community.