Creased Puddle – Neurodiversity Consultancy

Creased Puddle is a York-based consultancy that helps organisations change the conditions neurodivergent people work in — how managers communicate, how adjustments are agreed, how recruitment and conduct processes run — rather than asking staff to adapt to systems that were never built for them. Its main clients are employers, HR, occupational health and learning teams, alongside police forces and others in criminal justice, and it also delivers Access to Work-funded coaching to individual employees and self-employed people across the UK.

The company was set up in 2017 by Caroline Turner after more than 21 years as a police officer, during which she started the first neurodiversity support group within British policing. She was diagnosed with ADHD later in life and is a qualified trainer and workplace needs assessor. Her team is predominantly neurodivergent or made up of parents and carers of neurodivergent people, and includes criminal justice specialists, an occupational health consultant and an academic lead, backed by a UK-wide network of around 30 partner coaches trained to ILM Level 5. Content is peer reviewed by neurodivergent people under a "nothing about us without us" principle.

What sets Creased Puddle apart is its criminal justice depth and its role in training assessors. Police courses, many delivered by former officers, cover interviewing neurodivergent suspects, victims and witnesses, custody, and conduct processes. Its Level 4 Neurodiversity Workplace Needs Assessor course — which Caroline led the development of — runs over five days, partly online and partly in York. Workplace courses scale from a one-hour webinar to 30 hours of training, online, in person or hybrid, and there are two self-paced online courses for line managers and HR teams. Named clients include the NHS, College of Policing, NPCC and Sky Betting & Gaming.