Scottish Strategy for Autism: evaluation

1. Introduction

This report presents the findings from the evaluation of the ten-year Scottish Strategy for Autism.

Aims of the evaluation

In August 2020, the Scottish Government commissioned Blake Stevenson Ltd to undertake an evaluation of the Scottish Strategy for Autism. The strategy concludes in 2021 and Scottish Government wished to commission an independent evaluation to provide impartial evidence on the strategy’s impact and inform future policy.

The Scottish Government’s Autism and Learning Disability policy team specified that the evaluation should address three key questions:

• Have the strategy’s recommendations and priorities been delivered and are additional deliverables evident?
• What impact has the strategy had on the services offered to autistic people in local authorities and the local services and charities that support them?
• What lessons might be gleamed from the delivery of the strategy’s recommendations and what might these mean for the future policy direction?

Structure of the report

The remainder of this report is structured as follows:

Chapter 2: Background and context

Chapter 3: Findings: Delivery of strategy recommendations and priorities

Chapter 4: Findings: Impact of the strategy

Chapter 5: Discussion and Conclusions