Understanding Neurodivergence CPD Pathway

Neurodivergent Practice – CPD Pathway
CPD pathway

Neurodivergent Practice: From Curiosity to Meaningful Adjustment

Notice differently. Ask differently. Adapt practice. Review whether it helped.

Work through a structured route across the Neurodivergent Practice Support Hub, combining lived-experience-informed learning, executive functioning, communication, reasonable adjustment, critical reflection and applied professional judgement.

3 active CPD hours6 stagesSelf-directedApplied practice
Start the pathway ↓
Your neurodivergent practice learning journey

Move beyond awareness and turn curiosity into practical change

This 3-hour self-directed CPD pathway guides you through six connected stages of neuroinclusive practice. You will explore what you notice, what you may be assuming, what might sit underneath a person’s presentation, how to ask more useful questions, how to make meaningful adjustments and how to review whether those changes actually helped.

The pathway combines interactive activities, lived-experience-informed thinking, executive-function and communication challenges, applied scenarios and reflective practice, finishing with an integrated professional judgement activity.

1
NOTICE
2
WONDER
3
ASK
4
ADAPT
5
REVIEW
6
APPLY

6 stages · 3 hours CPD · Practical and interactive · Applied professional judgement

How to use it: complete the stages in order. Open each required activity, work through it, then return here for the next stage. The wider Hub remains available for additional games, flashcards, lived experience, public information and practice-support tools.

Six connected stages from noticing and wondering to meaningful adjustment, review and applied practice.
Work through the pathway

Six stages · 180 minutes

Each stage has a defined learning purpose and required activity, with the wider Neurodivergent Practice Support Hub available for optional extension and ongoing practice support.

1
20 minutes · notice

Start with what you notice

Separate observation from interpretation and challenge the assumptions that can gather around behaviour, communication and apparent engagement.

Stay with what is actually observable before deciding what it means. Consider masking, context, hidden load, strengths and different ways of processing the world.

ObservationAssumptionsCuriosity
2
30 minutes · wonder

Understand hidden load

Experience how executive-function, sensory and processing demands can make apparently simple professional tasks much harder than they look from the outside.

Connect the learning to appointments, forms, waiting, remembering information, transitions, task initiation, switching attention and processing verbal information.

Executive functioningProcessingHidden load
3
30 minutes · ask

Understand before you adjust

Move from identifying a possible need to finding out how this person experiences communication, sensory load, uncertainty, transitions, memory, attention and demand.

The aim is not to diagnose from behaviour. Ask what helps, what gets in the way, what the person already knows about themselves and what professionals may be missing.

CommunicationLived experienceAsk, don’t assume
4
35 minutes · adapt

Make the adjustment meaningful

Translate what you have learned into practical changes to communication, pace, environment, information, task demands and professional processes.

Use the meaningful adjustment test: What is the barrier? What does the person say would help? What can we change? Did we actually make the change? Did it improve access or participation?

BarrierAdjustmentParticipation
5
30 minutes · review

Challenge professional interpretation

Use a serious practice review lens to examine what happens when services interpret presentation without sufficiently understanding neurodivergent experience, communication or environmental demand.

Work back through the situation: Notice → Wonder → Ask → Adapt → Review. Identify where professional assumptions, service processes or missed adjustments may have changed the person’s experience or the outcome.

Critical reflectionService responseReview
6
35 minutes · apply

From assumption to defensible neuroinclusive practice

Bring the pathway together in one applied mental health social work scenario. Work through what is observable, what may be increasing threat, where agency can be strengthened, what professional curiosity requires and what you would actually say or do next.

Final task: make and justify an integrated professional response, then identify one change you will carry into your own practice.

ThreatAgencyCuriosityPractice change
Complete the pathway

Reflect, implement, evidence

The endpoint is active engagement with the pathway and an applied professional response, not simply time spent on the page.

Your CPD endpoint

Complete all six stages, finish the final applied activity and submit or record your final practice reflection.

✓ Complete all six stages
Work through the required learning in sequence.
✓ Complete the final activity
Apply the learning to a realistic practice situation.
✓ Record your reflection
Identify how the learning will affect your practice.
What will you notice, ask or change differently in practice as a result of this CPD?
Want to go further? The rest of the Neurodivergent Practice Support Hub remains available as your ongoing practice-support library. Games, additional flashcards, lived-experience material, public information and new tools are useful extensions but are not required to complete this CPD pathway.

Return to the full Practice Support Hub ↗

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