Background Despite receiving autism diagnoses in early life, autistic children are not routinely supported to understand these diagnoses post-diagnostically (1). Consequently, they typically grow-up lacking an accurate understanding of what it means to be autistic on both a collective and individual level (2). Without this foundational knowledge, children’s understanding of autism is garnered from how others perceive their autism, resulting in an understanding of autism, and of themselves, that is inherently negative (3). This lack of appreciation of their own individual needs, also denies them the important self-understanding afforded by the diagnosis in the first instance, alongside the opportunity to effectively self-advocate for themselves when these needs go unmet.

Aims Here we sought to directly assess the benefit of a pre-recorded, online autistic-led psychoeducation course about autism and the lived experience of being autistic (i.e., ‘NeuroBears’ https://www.pandasonline.org), for children’s understanding of autism and their autistic experiences, their feeling about being autistic, their communication with others about their autistic experiences, and their confidence to self-advocate for their needs.

Methods Using a concurrent embedded mixed-methods, repeated-measures design, autistic children (aged 8-14 years), completed a bespoke questionnaire exploring the above topics, both before and after completing NeuroBears at home with a nominated safe adult. A total of 63 children (mean age=10.57 years) completed sufficient content to be included in the analysis.

Results Significant benefit was observed across a range of areas, including a significant improvement in the children’s knowledge and understanding of being autistic and of their unique strengths and challenges, a significant rebalancing of how the children viewed being autistic, evidence of emerging positive autistic identities and a growing sense of belongingness, a significant change in the children’s abilities to communicate about being autistic, and evidence of strengthening self-advocacy skills.

Conclusion Learning about autism in a neutral and non-stigmatizing manner, and presented through the lens of autistic lived experience, conferred numerous benefits on autistic children’s self-understanding, emergent autistic identity, sense of belonging, and on their communication/self-advocacy skills. Future work is needed to establish the downstream benefits on wellbeing and quality of life.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

This study did not receive any funding

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The Faculty of Medical Sciences Research Ethics Committee of Newcastle University's Research Ethics Committee gave ethical approval for this work

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All data produced in the present study are available upon reasonable request to the authors