Maria is a PhD student at CRAE, tracking and evaluating an education to employment programme for autistic young people called Employ Autism, which was set up by the autism charity Ambitious about Autism.
Anna Remington (CRAE) and Brett Heasman (York St John University) supervise Maria’s research. Maria’s PhD research is tracking and evaluating an education to employment initiative for autistic young people, the Employ Autism network, set up by the education and employment charity, Ambitious about Autism. This is a three-year longitudinal evaluation, and collects data from the autistic young people, employers, and parents/carers to get a more holistic understanding about the transition from education to work for autistic people, and the Employ Autism network.
Before starting as a PhD student, Maria joined CRAE as a Research Assistant in May 2019, working on the Research Passport project and Research Toolkit funded by Autistica, as well as assisting on a number of other projects at CRAE.
Maria completed her BSc in Psychology and MSc in Social and Applied Psychology at the University of Kent. Since graduating, Maria worked as a Research Assistant on two developmental psychology research projects about Education Health and Care plans and a transition to secondary school in autistic children and children with Williams syndrome and Down syndrome. Maria has also volunteered with mental health charities, including Mind and SLV Global.
On the web: LinkedIn | ResearchGate
Recent publications:
Palikara, O., Castro-Kemp, S., Ashworth, M., & Van Herwegen, J. (2022). All views my own? Portraying the voices of children with complex neurodevelopmental disorders in statutory documents. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 129, 104321. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2022.104321
Sideropoulos, V., Palikara, O., Burchell, E., Ashworth, M., & Van Herwegen, J. (2022). Anxiety during Transition from Primary to Secondary Schools in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Cross-syndrome Comparison. Charlottesville, VA, USA: OSF Preprints. doi:10.31219/osf.io/vzjrc
Ashworth, M., Palikara, O., Burchell, E., Purser, H., Nikolla, D., & Van Herwegen, J. (2021). Online and Face-to-Face Performance on Two Cognitive Tasks in Children With Williams Syndrome. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, ARTN 594465. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.594465
Crane, L., Davies, J., Fritz, A., O’Brien, S., Worsley, A., Ashworth, M., & Remington, A. (2021). The transition to adulthood for autistic young people with additional learning needs: The views and experiences of education professionals in special schools (OSF Preprints). doi:10.31219/osf.io/84tvs
Crane, L., Davies, J., Fritz, A., O’Brien, S., Worsley, A., Ashworth, M., & Remington, A. (2021). The transition to adulthood for autistic young people with additional learning needs: the views and experiences of education professionals in special schools. British Journal of Special Education. doi:10.1111/1467-8578.12372
Ashworth, M., Crane, L., Steward, R., Bovis, M., & Pellicano, E. (2021). Towards empathetic autism research: Developing an autism-specific Research Passport. Autism in Adulthood.
Crane, L., Hearst, C., Ashworth, M., Davies, J., & Hill, E. L. (2020). Supporting newly identified or diagnosed autistic adults: an initial evaluation of an autistic-led programme. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.
Harvey, H., Ashworth, M., Palikara, O., & Van Herwegen, J. (2020). The Underreporting of Vision Problems in Statutory Documents of Children with Williams Syndrome and Down Syndrome. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. doi:10.1007/s10803-020-04520-5