Ellie Horton

I have worked in a number of roles within health and social care over the past 28 years. These have included Service Manager and Project Management employment within the voluntary sector. Many of my roles have been within settings which provide support to children and young people, people with learning disabilities and autistic people and their families. As a parent to an autistic daughter, this is an area that I am particularly passionate about.

Across varied work experience, I have promoted advocacy, empowerment and participatory approaches and have embedded these within all of my roles and research. I was a children's advocate for 10 years, I established a successful Service User forum while working as a project manager for young carers, and set up a group for autistic university students to be involved with and guide policies and procedures during my employment as a Mental Health and Wellbeing Adviser.

Over the past 9 years previous to starting at University College Birmingham in 2022, my work experience has been focused on supporting autistic people in university and wellbeing settings. This experience and interest led me to start a PhD at the University of Warwick in 2020. My research is focused on the mental health experiences of autistic university students and I have adopted a participatory approach.

I have taught as a guest lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton (Learning Disability Nursing) and Birmingham City University (Advocacy for Children and Young People).

• Journal article: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bild/gap/2015/00000016/00000001/art00009
• Chapter in a book: Helping Penguins to Swim

• PhD in Psychology at the University of Warwick