Lucy Maudsley Lucy Maudsley

If your employee has an Access to Work grant, here’s what can I offer you as a supplier.

Let’s get to the point! My core offer is specialist ADHD and neurodiversity coaching for adults facing barriers to entering, sustaining or progressing in employment.

I can provide:

• Individual coaching addressing organisation, time management, prioritisation, task initiation, emotional regulation and confidence, with practical strategies tailored to each participant’s circumstances.

• Group coaching and workshops helping participants understand their strengths, develop everyday strategies and build confidence in preparing for and managing work.

• Neurodiversity education for staff and employers, strengthening their understanding of ADHD and related needs and helping them make support and communication more accessible.

Support can include preparing for workplace conversations, identifying helpful adjustments and developing routines during the transition into a new role. Online delivery enables access across geographical areas and accommodates health needs and caring responsibilities.

My practice is ICO registered and insured, with regular professional supervision and continuing professional development.

I have been delivering Access to Work funded coaching for several years and am well practiced in the admin process.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you are an employer or self-employed person looking for ADHD coaching, coping strategy training, workplace strategy training or neurodiversity inclusion training.

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Lucy Maudsley Lucy Maudsley

Looking for an Access to Work coach to recommend? Meet Lucy Maudsley (me!)

By Lucy Maudsley, ADHD coach, mentor and educator

I offer qualified, experienced and neuro-affirming Autism and ADHD Coaching, with a professional, responsive service for the those making referrals. My Access to Work coaching combines practical workplace strategies, a warm working relationship and a clear focus on meaningful progress.

When you recommend a coach, you want to feel confident about both the support your client will receive and the person you will be dealing with. You need someone who understands neurodivergence, communicates clearly and follows through.

I welcome enquiries from DWP Access to Work case managers, assessors at Maximus and Reed in Partnership, other workplace support professionals, rehabilitation professionals, occupational health teams, HR and employers looking for an independent coach. Whether you need a quotation, a conversation about suitability or someone to support a client with overlapping needs, I would be pleased to hear from you.

Qualified coaching with substantial practical experience

I am a qualified ADHD coach with more than 800 hours of coaching experience. Alongside my diploma level coaching training with BCAT, my professional development has included autism awareness, counselling skills, trauma-informed practice and safeguarding. I undertake supervision and continuing professional development to support thoughtful, accountable practice.

Before coaching, I worked in senior leadership in the charity sector, including as a Director of Strategy. I understand the realities of professional life: competing priorities, responsibility for others, organisational change and the pressure to keep delivering when capacity is stretched.

I bring that experience into my coaching. We can talk about executive functioning in the context of the report that is overdue, the meeting that needs preparing for or the workload that has become unmanageable. My role is to help the client make sense of the difficulty and find a useful way forward.

Neuroaffirming Autism and ADHD Coaching

My approach starts with respect for the individual’s experience, strengths and needs. Clients can be open about what they find difficult, including the things they feel they “should” already be able to do.

For me, neuroaffirming coaching means making room for different ways of thinking, communicating and working. It means taking sensory needs, fluctuating energy and the effort of masking seriously. It also means recognising that the environment and expectations around someone may need to change.

I work with adults with ADHD, autism and AuDHD, including people navigating dyslexia, anxiety or chronic health difficulties alongside their neurodivergence. We consider how these experiences interact in daily working life, while keeping the coaching focused and manageable.

Clients help shape their goals and the pace of the work. When an approach does not fit, we explore why and adapt it. The relationship is warm, direct and collaborative, with space for honesty and practical action.

Workplace Strategy Coaching with a clear purpose

My Workplace Strategy Coaching focuses on changes that matter in the client’s actual role. We connect insight with practical coping strategies, then review how those strategies work between sessions.

Depending on the individual, our work may include:

  • Planning, prioritising and making realistic decisions about workload.

  • Starting tasks, managing perfectionism and following work through to completion.

  • Developing usable systems for email, administration, meetings and follow-up actions.

  • Improving time awareness and preparing for deadlines and transitions.

  • Managing interruptions, overwhelm and emotional responses at work.

  • Building confidence in communication, boundaries and asking for support.

  • Understanding sensory demands and working more sustainably with available energy.

Success needs to mean something to the person receiving the support. That might be a planning routine they can maintain, less time spent stuck before beginning a task, or greater confidence in discussing their needs with a manager.

We agree priorities, try manageable changes and review progress together. Written session recaps help clients return to the ideas and actions we have discussed. The aim is for useful learning to carry into the working week and remain useful beyond the coaching programme.

Professional, responsive and straightforward to work with

I know that a good referral experience includes the practical details. Clear communication and reliable follow-through are part of my service.

You deal directly with me, from the initial enquiry through to discussing the proposed coaching. I respond promptly, explain current availability and provide clear information about the support I can offer. If an enquiry falls outside my scope, I will be open about that at the outset.

For Access to Work and employer-funded coaching, I can provide a written quotation setting out the proposed sessions, delivery format and costs. We clarify the funding and invoicing arrangements before sessions begin, so everyone understands the next steps.

Where reporting is required, we agree its scope and the client’s consent in advance. This keeps communication useful for the commissioner while respecting the coaching relationship and the individual’s privacy.

Support for capable people who are finding work harder than it looks

I am particularly interested in working with adults whose competence can hide the effort involved in keeping up. They may be experienced professionals, managers or business owners who are delivering at work while becoming increasingly exhausted by the demands around it.

My background is especially relevant to people working in education, healthcare, charities and the wider public sector. I also support people in other professional roles and self-employment.

Clients do not need to arrive with neatly defined goals or a confident explanation of their needs. I can help them identify where support would make the greatest difference and build from there.

Online neurodiversity coaching with continuity

I am based in Wilmslow, Cheshire, and deliver one-to-one neurodiversity coaching online via Zoom, supporting clients in Greater Manchester, Cheshire and further afield.

Sessions are usually 60 minutes, often fortnightly, with the programme agreed around the client’s needs and the funded support. Online delivery makes it possible to work with me without adding travel to an already demanding week.

The client works with me throughout, allowing us to build understanding, notice patterns and develop strategies over time. I offer Access to Work, employer-funded and privately funded coaching.

A coach to keep in mind for your next referral

If you are looking for an Access to Work ADHD coach, autism coaching or a Workplace Strategy Coaching provider, I would welcome the opportunity to support your client.

You are welcome to contact me about a specific referral or simply to introduce yourself and find out more about my work. I can discuss suitability, share information about my training and experience, and provide a quotation based on the proposed support.

An initial enquiry only needs a brief outline of the person’s role, their main workplace difficulties and the funding arrangements, if known. It can be anonymised at this stage.

Contact Lucy Maudsley to discuss a referral, check availability or request an Access to Work coaching quotation.

Find further details on my Access to Work coaching page. You can also share this page How to choose an Access to Work coach for ADHD or autism with clients who would like to explore their options.

Lucy Maudsley Coaching is an independent practice welcoming professional referrals, including enquiries from Maximus assessors and DWP case managers.

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Lucy Maudsley Lucy Maudsley

Channel 4’s “The Great ADHD Myth?” 18 August 2026

Channel 4 Doc

A note from me, as an ADHD Coach, advocate, parent and wife, before The Great ADHD Myth? airs on Channel 4 tonight.

I know quite a few of the people who follow me, work with me, or are fellow ADHD-parents are already feeling angry, anxious or just thoroughly pissed off about this programme.

So before anything else, here's some permission if you need it - you do not have to watch it.

You certainly do not have to spend tomorrow defending yourself, your or your child's diagnosis or the decisions you have made for yourself and your family.

I’m thinking especially about the parents and carers who have agonised over whether to give their diagnosed child ADHD medication. Parents who have researched it, spoken to doctors, worried about side effects, tried other approaches, watched their child struggle and eventually made the best decision they could with the information they had (and perhaps paid out thousands in the process) will likely feel attacked, embarrassed, or isolated.

For many families, ADHD medication has made an enormously positive difference. For others it hasn't been right. These are individual clinical and parental decisions, and they are rarely made lightly.

Maybe you are an adult who has spent decades wondering why things other people seemed to manage are so extraordinarily difficult for you. People who have been called lazy, "too much", chaotic, careless, difficult, a space cadet or simply (and repeatedly) told to "try harder".

And I'm thinking particularly of the women I coach everyday, who were missed altogether as children and young people, and who have already spent enough of their lives questioning their own experience — sometimes after years of having their difficulties explained away by medical and educational professionals as anxiety, stress or personal failure.

It's because of my work with BRILLIANT people, many of whom are finally finding their feet, and their light, that I find the premise of this programme so troubling.

Channel 4's own publicity asks whether ADHD is actually a neurodevelopmental disorder and talks about children being given “mind-altering drugs”. There are probably legitimate conversations to be had about the quality of ADHD assessments and the ill funded system that forces people into private provision and medication. And there is definitely scope for discussing the role of social media in all of this. And 100% we should be talking about how schools and workplaces could be designed to accommodate a much wider range of human brain types.

But asking “is ADHD a myth?” is not where the scientific debate currently sits and nor should it. 

By now, after many decades of scientific and academic research, there is a very large substantial body of neuroscience and genetic research into ADHD. Large genetic studies have demonstrated a significant polygenic contribution to ADHD, including replicated genetic risk variants associated with brain development. Large-scale neuroimaging research has also found differences, at a group level, in brain structure and function between people with and without ADHD diagnoses.

There is not currently a brain scan, blood test or single genetic test that can diagnose ADHD in one individual. Professional, quality diagnosis remains a clinical process. But that doesn't mean there is no biological evidence for ADHD.

Earlier this year, 32 UK clinicians, academics, carers and people with lived experience published a paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry examining the claim that ADHD is being overdiagnosed. Their conclusion was that there is currently no evidence of ADHD being overdiagnosed at population level in the UK; in fact, the available evidence points towards underdiagnosis and substantial unmet need.

They also warned that alarmist narratives about the overdiagnosis risk could be used to deny properly diagnosed people the care they need. And yet, Channel 4, a public broadcaster, despite their commitment to "welcoming and empowering deaf, disabled and neurodivergent people across all levels and roles {which} is sure to enrich {their} output and organisation, and broadcasting as a whole"  have decided to jump feet first into a social media campaign and furore that does precisely that - amplifies alarmist narratives. Ask yourself - who does it help to have a provocative television programme question whether ADHD itself is a “myth”? 

NHS England's own independent ADHD Taskforce has similarly concluded that ADHD in England is under-recognised, under-diagnosed and under-treated, including with medication.

Those statistics and findings are bases for conversations that deserve proper scrutiny, research and debate. And, thinking positively, maybe they will get that in this programme tonight. But Channel 4 appear to have been incredibly defensive in reply to many organisations, charities, doctors and neurodivergent viewers in response to their concerns and complaints about the pre-broadcast coverage. And the damage has already been done in so many ways. 

So if tonight's programme leaves you doubting yourself, questioning decisions you've made for your child, or feeling that once again you are expected to prove that the difficulties you live with are real, please remember that an hour of television (made by people seemingly unconcerned by ethics) does not overturn decades of peer-reviewed research and the lived experience of millions of people. 

I see you, I believe in you, and if you ever need me, I will help you. 

I’ll be thinking of a lot of you tonight.

Remember, you don’t have to watch it.

SOURCES

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