Autistic People and Moving Home: A Systematic Review

This publication is included in the Autistic Autism Scholarship Project. one author of this publication is identified as autistic in the project.

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Mason, D., Milner, V., Clark, L., Kelly, E., Pyefinch, R., & Happé, F. (2022). Autistic People and Moving Home: A Systematic Review. Autism in Adulthood, 5(3), 236-247. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2022.0016

Publication date: 18 Nov 2022 Added to AutiHub: 18 Sep 2026 Type: Article Article language: English
Publisher source (DOI) Full text OpenAlex source

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Authors

Publication authors
6
Publication authors identified as autistic
1 / 6 (16.7%)
  1. David Mason *
  2. Victoria Milner
  3. Lauren Clark
  1. Emily Kelly
  2. Rebekah Pyefinch
  3. Francesca Happé

Abstract

Background: While many studies have examined where and with whom autistic people live, very few have looked at autistic people's experience of moving home. Choosing where to live, and being able to move residence, could be important for autonomy, and we therefore undertook a systematic review to identify studies about autistic adults' experience of moving home. Methods: We entered search terms relevant to autism and moving home into six databases and Google Scholar. After screening the titles and abstracts, we identified a final set of articles and screened the full text. We then checked the reference lists for potentially relevant articles; then, we conducted a search for articles that cited our final set of articles. Three raters assessed each included article for methodological quality. Results: The search strategy identified a total of 311 articles (initial search, ancestry searching, articles from other sources). After deduplication, we screened a total of 165 articles for eligibility. A final set of seven articles was identified. Our narrative synthesis of the articles suggests that both autistic people and the relatives of autistic people think living independently is a source of positive personal development. However, autistic people reported that poor employment prospects impacted on their financial independence and hence independent living. Parents highlighted concerns about their offspring's personal care, safety, and the difficulty of navigating the housing system for those autistic people with co-occurring intellectual disability. Conclusions: Taken together, our review suggests that autistic people and those who care for them have a positive view of independent living and are aware of the barriers to achieving this. Our review highlights a gap in the understanding of autistic adults' experience of moving home. We briefly describe our ongoing research project [the “Moving (as an) Autistic Person” project] exploring autistic people's experiences of moving house.

Bibliography cited by this reference

Cited references are imported from external metadata sources when they are available. The list may be partial.

Cited bibliography overview

These indicators describe the bibliography cited by this publication. An author name is counted each time it appears in one cited reference, so the same person can be counted more than once. Names not yet linked to an author already present in AutiHub are treated as unknown, not as non-autistic. Last computed: 2 Oct 2026 07:55.

Cited references
42
With a DOI
37
Without a DOI, from raw bibliography text
5
1 / 42 (2.4%) cited references include at least one author identified as autistic.
References with data to complete
3 / 42 (7.1%)
References with detected author names
42 / 42 (100.0%)
Without detected author names
0
Without a structured title
3
Without a stable identifier
5
References with raw author names still to review
0
References with external metadata lookup issues
0
These indicators apply to cited references displayed on this page, after technical duplicates have been merged. A reference without a DOI can still support author statistics when a title and author names are available.
Author names detected in the cited bibliography
142
From DOI or external metadata
142
From validated raw bibliography text
0
Raw names already validated
0
Raw names still to review
0
42 / 142 (29.6%) names are linked to an author already present in AutiHub. 100 / 142 (70.4%) names are not yet linked.
Names linked to a person identified as autistic
1 / 142 (0.7%)
Calculated across all author names detected in the cited bibliography. Among names linked to an author already present in AutiHub: 1 / 42 (2.4%). Distinct people identified as autistic: 1 / 128 (0.8%).
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