Understanding Healthcare Access for Autistic Children in the UK: Perspectives From Parents and Healthcare Professionals.

Abstract

Purpose: Access to healthcare for autistic children remains challenging, with previous qualitative and quantitative research identifying barriers across individual, provider, and system levels. This study used qualitative interviews to explore parents'/carers' and healthcare professionals' perspectives on healthcare accessibility for autistic children in the UK, with particular attention to barriers, facilitators, and areas of convergence and divergence between the two groups.

Methods: A phenomenologically informed qualitative approach was employed. Semi-structured interviews were conducted online with 12 parents/carers of autistic children and eight healthcare professionals, including general practitioners, nurses, and speech and language therapists. Participants were recruited through survey follow-up, social media, and snowball sampling. Data were analysed using inductive, phenomenologically informed reflexive thematic analysis, with NVivo 14 used to manage the data.

Results: Four themes were identified across the parent/carer and healthcare professional datasets: knowledge and training, reasonable adjustments, communication, and system-level barriers. Both groups recognised barriers associated with inconsistent autism-specific knowledge, communication, service pressures, and fragmented care, but differed in emphasis. Parents/carers more often described the consequences of unmet needs and inconsistent adjustments, whereas healthcare professionals emphasised workload pressures, variable training, and the need to adapt care within existing service constraints.

Conclusions: This study highlights the urgent need for addressing systemic inefficiencies, flexibility in healthcare services, and individualised approaches to meet the needs of autistic children and their families to ensure equitable access to healthcare for autistic children in the UK.