'People really want to support neurodivergent people – they just sometimes don’t know how'

When did you come to Nottingham, and what does it mean to you?

I came in about 1998. I was doing a PhD… I started at Birmingham University, my supervisor moved, and so I finished my final year at Nottingham. I stayed on as a lecturer, and now professor, so it's become quite close to my heart: the university, and the area as well. 

More recently, with our research, we've tried to look at how to work with the community around us, to maximise the impacts of the research, and to bridge academic scholarship and our society.

And is that based on identifying particular local needs?

My main area of research is working with autistic or neurodivergent individuals. So people in the community sometimes reach out to us as an autism research team for advice, and you start to build an appreciation for the challenges people are having. We also have an autism social network here at the university, which is quite unique. We've been running that for at least eight years, every two weeks, with a community of autistic and neurodivergent students.

So there's a lot of interaction with people who are directly impacted by the research that we do, and that helps to identify those areas of need in the community.

To give a recent example, we're trying to help support autistic individuals in getting and maintaining employment. We're looking at ways to increase awareness and support for companies and organisations outside the university, and we recently did a civic engagement workshop where we met people from Nottinghamshire Healthcare and West Nottinghamshire College to discuss doing some training with them.

I think what's happening is that the public are becoming more aware of neurodiversity in general. They contact us, and then we end up building up these mutual relationships and collaborative projects.

When you say collaborative projects, are they involved in the co-production, the actual design of the research, or do they just give you topics?

The essence of our work is co-production, a lot of the time. The training was formed through focus groups and co-production type processes in research. We've also worked with Nottinghamshire Police on quite a long co-production project looking at adapting the custody process for autistic individuals within police custody. We did some interviews with autistic people who had been in custody, and then we added a very different way of approaching research that I hadn't done before – a walk-through. 

We had two autistic people come into the police custody environment in downtown Nottingham, in the Bridewell Suite, and walk them through the custody process. They had never been in police custody before, and they just experienced everything: booking in, the fingerprinting, the photograph taking, everything. We videoed it, did interviews, and then analysed it.

Simple things that came out were suggestions about changes to the language use. In the booking process, simply saying, 'Where do you live?' sounded great initially. But the autistic person didn't quite know what level to gauge it at. So they said, 'Well, I live in Nottingham.' And when asked 'Where in Nottingham?', they said a more specific area. The police would say, 'Well, no, what's your address?', and the autistic person was like, 'Why didn't you just ask that to begin with?'

The sensory features of autism were also heavily impacted in our custody process. There was very bright, artificial fluorescent lighting, loud noises, strong smells of disinfectants, and high gloss reflective paint on the walls. We happened to do this research at the same time they were building a new custody suite in Radford, and we worked with the coordinator of that, Inspector Duncan Collins, to feed into the design of that suite.

Other police forces have come to visit the new suite to get ideas for how to develop more neurodivergent, friendly facilities. So that has been one of the most rewarding projects, because we were able to do the research, and then collaborate to see real-world changes.

Do you hope autistic people will self-identify to the police and for the improved procedures to roll out from that, or are you aiming to train the police to spot the signs and know what to do?

That's a good question. I do maintain the training with the police every year, and that question comes up. What we try to say is that it's not always easy to spot whether someone is autistic or not. Autistic people might not be aware that they are… they might not have a diagnosis yet. They might be aware they have a diagnosis, but be afraid of disclosing it, due to prejudice or stigma. 

And a lot of autistic individuals can camouflage or mask certain characteristics or traits in public. So we try to emphasise changes across the board for everyone. Changes such as being less ambiguous with wording can help a range of neurotypical people as well, including those for whom English isn't their first language, and juveniles. 

We've created a toolkit with visuals and simpler language, and the police tell us it's been beneficial for a wide range of people, not just autistic individuals. I'm not saying these changes fix everything. But if someone's acting a bit differently, awareness of other adjustments can make things a little bit easier.

I'm thinking of ADHD, another form of neurodivergence, where there can be quite a strong personal sense of justice, and I can imagine how responses in this situation can come across as aggression. You could get into a vicious cycle quite quickly.

Yes, I think ADHD tends to be quite highly represented in the criminal justice system, so it's important to have an understanding of a person who might be coming across as that way, and be sensitive to it so that you don't exacerbate that interaction. When we did the walk-through, we interviewed the police officers as well, and there were certain things they said. 

For example, there's a 'Codes of Practice' book that you can access as your right in a custody situation, and the police would say 'nobody ever asks to see the book, but this person did. I just thought he was being difficult.' But actually, that person was just wanting as much information as possible. 

They didn't understand the situation or know whether that was something that was important. And then some autistic individuals, not all, some avoid eye gaze. Again, police officers can say how that can be interpreted as not paying attention.

What other areas are there where people just need that kind of advice?

Well, when we looked at what training was out there for workplaces, we found that a lot of it is very generic. 'This is neurodivergence', 'this is autism'. It lists the traits. But we were finding that's not what people needed to make effective change. They needed somebody there to help understand what that translated to, what that meant for them in the workplace. When we worked with the police, they said, 'Don't just tell us an autistic person has difficulties with this, tell us what it is we need to change'. That's what the walk-through did.

So we've started to apply that same approach to other things, including with a company in the private sector. We reviewed recruitment and interview materials and policy information. And we went down to visit them, and did a walk-through of the physical space, alongside questionnaires with the employees to identify areas where change was needed, and to give them a more unique view on how that translates into a workable solution.

What we're finding is that people really want to support neurodivergent people – they just sometimes don't know how. The way the system is set up puts a lot of burden on the person to disclose personal information about themselves again and again. We're trying to figure out a better way, so an autistic person isn't constantly having to face that burden of championing, asking for help or support, and so the system is more accessible to all from the start.

I really like the walk-through approach. It seems like it could be an obvious part of a lot of Psychology research, but I think it's the first time I've heard a psychologist use that phrase.

I think it has been used in driving research as a ride-along. It's a little bit different from what I've done before. I'm used to doing studies that involve quite a large number of participants, not just a couple. We would have ideally done it with maybe 10 people on the day, but it was resource-heavy, and it was quite an intense atmosphere, actually. 

A lot of support was needed for the autistic people, even afterwards. They could opt out at any point, and some did opt out of the body search… but it was very intensive. We needed the police officers, the autistic person, the whole floor, and it was quite time-consuming. But it was a very rich source of information. We could interview the autistic person afterwards: how they felt, where they found there were issues. 

We could interview the police officer: what was the interaction like for you? Where did you find it was awkward? Where did you find you needed more support? And then we could also take notes on the social interactions that we observed as psychologists, where we observed there were barriers or a need to change.

That must have felt like a good day. What is it about your work that makes you feel like you've had a good day when you kind of go home in the evening?

The contact I have with neurodivergent people. I love the fact that so many of our neurodivergent students come to me with ideas, often putting together their training, their learning as an undergraduate, but also their personal experience. They're coming out with some really innovative and interesting ideas, and I find that whole thing inspiring, trying to empower neurodivergent people more and more.

Do you identify as neurodivergent yourself?

I do have a lot of neurodivergent family members, and I suspect I would have been diagnosed with dyslexia had it been a bit more on the radar. Sometimes I can see some ADHD traits in myself, but I don't have a formal diagnosis of anything.

I know your work is about understanding the sensory, social and attentional processes in autism. I personally think that the sensory side of neurodivergence has been underestimated, perhaps until recent years. Because really, it's behind a lot of the social processes, too, isn't it?

I completely agree. Traditionally, they've been looked at separately, which is why, again, the research we're doing more recently is trying to look at the whole package and how they interact.

In terms of diagnosis, I always say to people, a diagnosis is only helpful if you feel there's a need for it. Sometimes people don't feel that they would get any additional help from a diagnosis, but they feel that it's important to their identity.

A diagnosis is a very personal thing, which is why sometimes we work with people who identify with a certain diagnosis, even if they don't have a formal diagnosis of it.

I think neurodivergence can be a more positive lens to view personal things through than a mental health lens, when a lot of what happens in life can be viewed through either.

That's one part of what we're trying to encourage through our research and teaching. If you're neurotypical, it's too easy to default towards interpreting things in a neurotypical way. We have to be careful not to rule out and neglect the neuro-minority. We must think of things that we can do to support and to be a more inclusive society, regardless. So, yes, not easy!

That should keep you busy! Do you think you'll stay in Nottingham for the foreseeable future to do that work?

Yes – I love the combination of the research and the teaching, and here in Nottingham, a lot of value and emphasis is placed on the real-world impacts of research. I love that part of it. It just gives you more motivation to think of how to apply your research in the real world.

We do sometimes have these pipe dreams about creating our own business or consultancy around increasing employment opportunities for neurodivergent people. 

Having the knowledge is one thing, but understanding what that translates to, what that would mean in terms of a change in your interaction or interpretation of behaviours… that's the part people don't see. The generic training isn't working. So we're trying to identify the problems with translation, and to provide support for that to happen better.

• See also our 'Neurodivergence' collection.