Why This Matters
Social prescribing has the potential to significantly improve wellbeing and quality of life for autistic people by connecting them to meaningful activities and community support. However, autistic people currently face substantial barriers in accessing and benefiting from social prescribing at every stage of the pathway. Poorly matched or rushed social prescribing can worsen anxiety, disengagement, or mistrust in services. Making social prescribing accessible is essential for ensuring equity, improving health outcomes, and promoting social inclusion.
What this Guide is for
This guide provides practical recommendations for making social prescribing more accessible and inclusive for autistic people across the entire pathway – from referral through to community engagement. It also includes case studies demonstrating how these recommendations can realistically be implemented in different service contexts.
Where this Guide has come from
This guide has been co-produced by the Social Biobehavioural Research Group at University College London (UCL) and Autistica with autistic adults, caregivers of autistic people, and social prescribing professionals through a series of workshops and individual conversations (May – September 2025). These discussions identified barriers autistic people currently face when trying to access social prescribing, co-developed solutions, and explored examples of best practice.
By Emeline Han, Charlotte Featherstone, and Amanda Roestorf
Key Messages
- Every autistic person is different. Person-centred approaches that are tailored to individual preferences, interests, goals, and support needs are essential.
- Prioritise building relationships and trust. This takes time, consistency, and genuine listening, especially as many autistic people have had negative service experiences.
- Go beyond signposting. Effective social prescribing for autistic people requires hands-on, wraparound support – not just providing information about available services.
- Simple changes can have significant impact. Offering choice of communication method, providing information in advance, and allowing processing time are easy to implement, yet can mean the difference between autistic people accessing support or being excluded.
- System-wide commitment to accessibility is crucial. Stable funding, clear information sharing processes, and strengthened training and workforce development are needed to sustain best practices throughout the social prescribing pathway.
- Co-production with autistic people is fundamental. This can start small and grow, from feedback, consultation, shared decision-making, to autistic-led service design and delivery.
What Needs to Change
Making social prescribing accessible requires action at multiple levels:
- Individual level: Build autism understanding, adapt communication, provide hands-on support, and practise genuine person-centred care.
- Service level: Offer flexible pathways, train staff appropriately, allocate sufficient time for relationship-based support, create clear processes with warm handovers, and ensure sensory considerate environments.
- System level: Fund adequate capacity for hands-on support, commission autism-friendly community activities, reduce geographic disparities, create accountability for accessibility, and involve autistic people in decisions about their care.
This work was supported by Autistica and UCL’s HEIF Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund.
We are deeply grateful to all the autistic adults, caregivers, and professionals who have generously contributed their time, insights, and experiences. The recommendations and case studies in this guide are based on their lived and learned expertise. We recognise that this guide reflects current understanding and that social prescribing practice continues to evolve.
