eVeR safe: Developing an educational curriculum on emergency skills for autistic adults

This presentation will introduce the eVeR safe project. This is an innovative multi-national research project which aims to create a curriculum using Virtual Reality (VR) to teach autistic adults how to safely responds during emergency situations. Emergency situations can include natural disasters, fires, injury, car crashes and encountering hostile individuals. Unfortunately, difficulties in social communication and restricted behaviour patterns mean autistic individuals may be more vulnerable to harm during such events (Wiseman et al., 2017). This presentation will introduce the main aims of the eVeR safe project, which have been formulated by a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and a series of expert advisory focus groups. Both of which will be discussed. The SLR includes 40 studies which taught skills to help prepare for or prevent an emergency, alongside skills designed to respond during or after an emergency. The SLR focuses on recognising best teaching practice and identifying gaps in knowledge. The expert advisory panels were located across four countries: Ireland, Greece, Bulgaria and Lithuania. Two expert panels were assembled for each country. The first collected the opinions of autistic adults and the other the views of parents and professionals who support autistic adults. The results of these panels will also be discussed to provide rationale for the eVeR safe curriculum and VR scenarios. Lastly, the next steps of the project will be discussed, including multi-national pilot studies.