89 research outputs found

    Social Prescribing for Autistic Adults

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    Background Autistic adults are affected by health and social disparities that impact life expectancy and quality of life, frequently resulting in escalating wellbeing concerns requiring costly acute care. Evidence suggests barriers to healthcare and a lack of post-diagnostic support may contribute to these inequalities. Social prescribing, a low-intensity personalised care model receiving increasing attention from policymakers and commissioners, offers opportunities to address isolation, build skills and promote health through collaborations between services and communities. However, social prescribing research and provision has overlooked wellbeing and access needs of autistic adults. This PhD project aimed to investigate factors affecting accessibility of social prescribing pathways, which can comprise a variety of models and mechanisms, and their suitability for autistic adults from initial referral through to prescribed activities. Methods The research delivered a systematic mapping review and mixed-methods study. The review synthesised previous reviews of literature on outcomes, settings and service pathways within community-based services for autistic adults. An online survey of 128 autistic adults explored barriers to primary healthcare, the point of access to social prescribing, across changing contexts using regression analysis. Semi-structured interviews with 23 autistic participants investigated perspectives on wellbeing, attitudes towards social prescribing as a response to wellbeing barriers, and provision of wider support in the community. Qualitative data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, incorporating critical realism and the candidacy framework, to examine individual, relational and systemic factors. Results Findings suggest that access to social prescribing for autistic adults via referral from health and social care services involves patient and provider evaluations, socioeconomic factors and wider contexts. Self-determination was found to link themes relating to meanings of wellbeing for autistic adults. Social prescribing may promote self-determination through its tailored approach. However, pathways require adaptions to maximise engagement, including offering alternative referral routes, novel prescriptions and additional support at key transition points. Providers should work with the autistic community to improve access and acceptability, and bring mutual benefits for individuals and services. Conclusions Service commissioners and policymakers should consider supporting a social prescribing pathway embedded in autism diagnostic services or upskilling existing social prescribing pathways to adapt their practice for autistic adults. The research also adds to understandings of peer support and self-determination as important mechanisms in wellbeing for autistic adults

    Commons in Design

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    The scarcity of resources, climate change, and the digitalization of everyday life are fuelling the economy of swapping, sharing, and lending—all of which are in some way linked to a culture of commoning. In this context, we understand commons as community-based processes that use, collectively manage, and organize generally accessible resources—referring to both goods and knowledge. Commons in Design explores the meaning and impact of commons—especially knowledge-based peer commons—and acts of commoning in design. It discusses networked, participatory, and open procedures based on the commons and commoning, testing models that negotiate the use of commons within design processes. In doing so, it critically engages with questions regarding designers’ positionings, everyday practices, self-understandings, ways of working, and approaches to education

    Cities of Culture:Model of Evaluation

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    Creative Health Review:How Policy Can Embrace Creative Health

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    A case study of Art at the Start featured within the Creative Health Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing and the National Centre for Creative Healt

    PROCEEDINGS 5th PLATE Conference

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    The 5th international PLATE conference (Product Lifetimes and the Environment) addressed product lifetimes in the context of sustainability. The PLATE conference, which has been running since 2015, has successfully been able to establish a solid network of researchers around its core theme. The topic has come to the forefront of current (political, scientific & societal) debates due to its interconnectedness with a number of recent prominent movements, such as the circular economy, eco-design and collaborative consumption. For the 2023 edition of the conference, we encouraged researchers to propose how to extend, widen or critically re-construct thematic sessions for the PLATE conference, and the paper call was constructed based on these proposals. In this 5th PLATE conference, we had 171 paper presentations and 238 participants from 14 different countries. Beside of paper sessions we organized workshops and REPAIR exhibitions

    Creative Health Review:How Policy Can Embrace Creative Health

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    A case study of Art at the Start featured within the Creative Health Report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing and the National Centre for Creative Healt

    Design as Democratic Inquiry

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    Through practices of collaborative imagination and making, or "doing design otherwise,” design experiments can contribute to keeping local democracies vibrant. In this counterpoint to the grand narratives of design punditry, Carl DiSalvo presents what he calls “doing design otherwise.” Arguing that democracy requires constant renewal and care, he shows how designers can supply novel contributions to local democracy by drawing together theory and practice, making and reflection. The relentless pursuit of innovation, uncritical embrace of the new and novel, and treatment of all things as design problems, says DiSalvo, can lead to cultural imperialism. In Design as Democratic Inquiry, he recounts a series of projects that exemplify engaged design in practice. These experiments in practice-based research are grounded in collaborations with communities and institutions. The projects DiSalvo describes took place from 2014 to 2019 in Atlanta. Rather than presume that government, industry—or academia—should determine the outcome, the designers began with the recognition that the residents and local organizations were already creative and resourceful. DiSalvo uses the projects to show how design might work as a mode of inquiry. Resisting heroic stories of design and innovation, he argues for embracing design as fragile, contingent, partial, and compromised. In particular, he explores how design might be leveraged to facilitate a more diverse civic imagination. A fundamental tenet of design is that the world is made, and therefore it could be made differently. A key concept is that democracy requires constant renewal and care. Thus, designing becomes a way to care, together, for our collective future
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