The Autism Practice Improvement Programme (APIP)

The Autism Practice Improvement Programme

The Autism Practice Improvement Programme (APIP) is a tailored consultancy service designed to help organisations review, refine and improve their autism practice.

Through a collaborative process, we work alongside your team to identify strengths, uncover gaps, and develop practical, sustainable strategies that truly enhance the experiences of autistic people in your care or service.

Every organisation is different — which is why APIP is flexible and shaped around your needs. Whether you’re looking to evaluate current approaches, embed autism-informed principles, or align with best practice standards, we’ll support you every step of the way.

Our consultants bring a balance of lived experience, professional expertise and up-to-date research to guide your team through the process. Together, we’ll help you build confidence, strengthen practice, and create environments where autistic people feel respected, understood and supported.

The foundation of the Autism Practice Improvement Programme is that we advocate for the use of an ethical framework that underpins practice. The core elements of the framework signal a commitment to practice that focuses on the happiness, wellbeing and the lifelong development of those we support.

The framework is designed to guide policy, practice, decision making and interactions with autistic people. Our aim is that these ethical foundations will, overtime, pervade every aspect of organisational development.

The Process

The APIP process helps services reflect on their practice and plan improvements. It has three main stages:

You’ll use a special tool to guide your self-assessment.
A facilitator from our team will support you throughout.
The tool includes clear statements based on our ethical framework.

For each statement, you’ll reflect on:

Strengths/Evidence: What you’re doing well, with examples or documents.
Areas for Improvement: What could be better or done differently.
This helps you think about what’s working and what needs to change—whether that’s systems, processes, or how you support individuals.

Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, they’ll be grouped into themes.
You’ll choose three key areas to focus on.
We’ll give you tools to help plan and track your progress.
You decide how to make the changes, but we’re here to offer advice and support.

This stage is a great opportunity for your team to collaborate and learn together.

When you’ve made good progress on your improvement projects, you can submit them for assessment.
We’ll provide a template and all the information you need to complete your submission.

Ready to Start Your APIP Journey? Want to Know More?

Drop us a message, we’d love to talk to you!

Community of Practice

Your APIP journey doesn’t end on completion of your improvement projects, we hope that you will continue to explore how you can continuously improve your practice. That’s why we have created our APIP Community of Practice; a place to exchange ideas, tools and best practice.

We hope that this will be place where people can offer mutual support, real life experiences and share knowledge.