The first inclusive digital peer support solution with integrated clinical supervision and suicide screening designed with, and for, autistic children and young people

Tellmi is a scalable early intervention that delivers safe, digital (IOS/Android/Web) clinically supervised anonymous, age-banded, pre-moderated peer support to children and young people (CYP) aged 11-25\. Tellmi also offers preemptive counsellor intervention for high-risk CYP, text-based Solution Focused Therapy and a Directory of 700+ crisis and specialist services and resources.

Tellmi can be filtered by topic. This creates a 'shortcut' to like-minded peers that is invaluable for isolated CYP. Independent evaluation by the Evidence Based Practice Unit at UCL found statistically significant evidence that using Tellmi improves CYP mental health (Ravaccia, 2022).

Although Tellmi was not designed to support autistic CYP, 20% of respondents to our 2024 impact survey (N=770+ ongoing) have an autism diagnosis; just 1.8% of CYP in the population have an autism diagnosis. In 2023, preliminary research with 1,880 autistic CYP conducted in partnership with the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge found evidence that Tellmi facilitates social connection and removes barriers to communication for both speaking and non-speaking autistic CYP.

However, autistic users made 3 times more posts about suicide than neurotypical users. There is an urgent need for autism-specific mental health solutions because 70% of autistic CYP have at least one mental health condition and autistic CYP are 28 times more likely to think about, or attempt, suicide (Willgross, 2022).

Working in partnership with human-centred design agency Mima, with support from the autism specialist team at Leicestershire NHS Trust, we will use people-centred and systemic design methods to prototype and test the first inclusive digital peer support solution with integrated clinical supervision and enhanced suicide prevention capabilities, which will be designed with, and for, autistic CYP. A dedicated autism module, which will be built into Tellmi and unlocked by subscription, will integrate Machine Learning (ML) to detect high-risk posts.

Autistic CYP who are identified as needing additional support will be automatically escalated for clinical supervision and suicide screening with a trained autism counsellor. An autistic PPIE lead will support a cohort of autistic CYP who will contribute directly to research, ideation, prototyping, testing and iterative development of screening tools, safety plans, simpler navigation, video instructions, and signposting to a directory of postcode-linked support services, bespoke wellbeing resources and psychoeducation.

Co-creation will ensure that our solution meets the specific needs of autistic CYP, increasing the likelihood of adoption.