The Child Autism UK team - Child Autism UK

At Child Autism UK, our number one resource is our team of passionate and committed staff.

Clinical Managers

All of the programmes we run are over seen by our Clinical Managers: Kirsty Hayhoe and Suzy Yardley

Kirsty Hayhoe, BCBA

Kirsty Hayhoe Clinical Manager Child Autism UK

Kirsty is a registered Learning Disabilities nurse, has a degree in Psychology, and has a MEd in Special Education (Autism) from Birmingham University, and is a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst (BCBA). Kirsty has been an ABA based practitioner for 22 years, and has worked with children in every year from Nursery to 6^th Form, and has a solid knowledge of the National Curriculum, specialising in the Early Years to Key Stage 3.

Suzy Yardley, BCBA

Suzy Yardley Clinical Manager Child Autism UK

Suzy has an MSc in Behaviour Analysis, and is a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst (BCBA). She has been an ABA based practitioner for 18 years, and again has worked with children in every year from Nursery to 6^th Form, and has a solid knowledge of the National Curriculum, specialising in the Early Years to Key Stage 3.

The Role of the Clinical Manager

Kirsty and Suzy share the role of managing the Child Autism UK clinical services. They have held this role for nearly ten years, supporting staff and directing the way the provision is delivered to ensure quality and effectiveness. They have supervised hundreds of children in many different settings throughout the UK. They also lead the Child Autism UK outcome research with Warwick University to ensure services are robust and can demonstrate progress.

Wider projects have involved regularly contributing to the NICE Autism guidelines, being on the writing groups for the Autism Specific Safeguarding guidelines and the UK ABA Autism Education Competence Framework. This year they have also supported local ABA Free School, Forest Bridge, through contributing to the original application, designing and running child assessments and helping run staff interviews. Kirsty spoke at the medical conference Autism Today. Suzy is Secretary of the UK Society for Behaviour Analysis (UKSBA).

Senior Case Manager

Claire Cotterill, BCBA

Claire Cotterill

Claire has an MSc in Applied Behaviour Analysis, and has been a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst (BCBA) since 2010. She has been an ABA based practitioner since 1998 and has worked with children of all ages and into early adulthood. Claire joined the charity in 2004 as a case manager and become a senior case manager in 2011.

As well as helping to support the clinical services generally, Claire also takes a key role in many of the projects for instance organizing grant-specified training, and ensuring Vinelands, VB-Mapps and other measures are rigorously collected.

Case Managers

All case managers have extensive training and experience of working with families and schools to design effective teaching and behaviour support strategies, in order to help each child reach their potential. In addition, all have experience running Vinelands and VB-Mapp assessments, creating IEP goals, writing reports for Annual Reviews and Tribunals, and running other services such as training talks.

The team meet regularly for ongoing training and sharing of ideas, and we hold 6 weekly case conferences. So each family or school is actually getting the benefit of the whole team’s experience and knowledge! In addition to in-house training, staff also attend conferences and external training to ensure everyone’s clinical practice is kept right up to date.

We have 11 case managers covering the majority of the UK:

Rebecca Ayton