Francis Evans provides a case study to illustrate how a reduction in restrictive physical interventions improved the quality of life of a man in a community setting

This article considers the challenges involved in supporting a man with autism to develop a valued life in the community, rather than face hospital admission in his late teens. The care team involved had to ensure that the client’s co-existing severe learning disabilities should not lead to his autism-specific needs being overlooked. In doing so, the team did not measure progress by how much the client’s behaviour changed, but by whether they reduced the number of restrictive physical interventions they made.