** ANNOUNCEMENT ** : the NAS helpline is closing from 19th may

So there is some sanity out there...

I Sperg said:

IF I want to get my child's gender reassigned there are people falling over themselves to throw money and time at that "problem"

I believe the waiting list for under 18s GID referral first appointment on the NHS is over 2 years now. It's getting to the point that when they get seen they may not be under 18 anymore. This would be unthinkable in any other area of the NHS. Money is hardly being thrown at them.

do u think this forum is free it and maintains itself by magic and the help of the fairies ?

So let me get this straight.

IF I want to get my child's gender reassigned there are people falling over themselves to throw money and time at that "problem", but the normie dominated society makes no effort to help US.

If, as has been suggested elsewhere, we are 1 in 50 of the population, that's over 1 million of us, but still; we do not qualify for any of societies resources!! 

They can't even run a helpline for us!! 

Are we not a minority? Why do other minorities get so much help and we get none? POLITICS. We just aren't good at politics...

Probably because as a group we are nice and helpful by inclination, and reluctant to "parade" or "Burn Loot and Murder" to get our way. 

So I guess things will never change. 

yes they are awesome thats my feedback

Hi Aidie,

We know just how important the Autism Helpline has been for thousands of people over the years, and we appreciate the tremendous skills of the staff and volunteers who provide that service. Our trained helpline volunteers have done an amazing job and, until the pandemic, we had been increasing the number of volunteers we used, allowing us to increase the number of enquiries the helpline was able to deal with.

We knew the our committed supporters and our volunteers would have wanted to help, rather than have the helpline close. We did look at a range of options, including the potential of a specific fundraising campaign around the helpline. However, there are limits to how far one can use volunteers in a service like the helpline and therefore to the savings possible. We would still need staff to oversee the service, provide training and support, and ensure it met consistent quality standards. And there are also other costs, like telephone and other systems. The helpline would still have required long term funding, and indeed the capacity to continue to raise those funds - all of which, unfortunately, we don't have.

The other vital factor we have to consider is looking out for our volunteers and making sure we don't ask too much of them. We have to use our available resources where we can reach the most people, so are focusing on our digital guidance and support, including our online community, and on support from our volunteer-led branches.

If you have any feedback or comments that you would like to pass on about the closure of the helpline, we do encourage you to email us at helpline.comments@nas.org.uk.

Many thanks,

Dani Mod

why not ask for volunteers from this forum ?

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your feedback about the closure of one of our helplines, the Autism Helpline. We are very sorry that we have had to make the decision to close this helpline, and understand that this will be difficult for many autistic people and families. However, the impact of the coronavirus has meant we had to make significant savings.

Our Chief Executive, Caroline Stevens, explains why we are having to adapt some of our activities, including closing this helpline in her blog (which Aidie has also very kindly linked in the post above): www.autism.org.uk/.../adapting-our-work-due-to-coronavirus

If you would like to give your feedback on this, we encourage you to email us at Helpline.Comments@nas.org.uk

Unfortunately, as the team is very small they will not be able to reply to emails personally, but please be assured that all feedback about the closure of the helpline is being monitored and reported to our Senior Management Group and Trustees.

Once again, we are sorry we will be closing the Helpline. You can find information about other sources of advice and guidance here: www.autism.org.uk/.../help-and-support

Kind regards,

Dani Mod

I think you'd need to pay to schedule a 24 hour meeting anyway. (roughly 120£/y which works out at about 33p/day) And if you are paying for it I don't see the issue with getting the most of the service.

The real issue is staffing anything 24/7 is hugely expensive. And the autism helpline gets so many calls it needs a queueing system at peek times. Something text based and non live would be far better. You can arrange a team to respond outside of peek times, assign responding to difrent enquiaryes to multiple team members based on background knowledge. Where appropriate you can have template responses for common enquiries with an invitation to write back if there isn't enough detail in the template.

I'm software illiterate apart from a little forth and z80 assembler. I also see a moral distinction (which may or not be real) of taking legitimate advantage of features that exist versus seeking to extend that advantage by means of a software hack. As a ( of necessity) non-paying user, I'm already a parasite. 

That's impressive. But a bit hacky, could fail anytime zoom tweaks their algorithm. Could you just write a script to schedule a new 24h zoom every day and update the link on a redirect page you keep on your own server?

After several days, yes!

The loophole seems to be, one host, one extra participant = endless meeting, ended only when zoom detects a serious level of inaction. Observing a workbench on which a spectrum analyser is displaying a constantly changing picture seems to be enough... As soon as you add an extra person the 40 minutes comes into play. Even if that extra person is your second laptop running on your local network. We were hoping to use one laptop to stream the readout from the analyser on one screen and view the apparatus on another using two zoom identities & two machines but then the endless meeting feature disappeared, and we have really been enjoying that.

Psychologically speaking, it's been a weird experience, it's like my friend is lodging in my workshop, and appearing form time to time, where in actual fact he is in another country! He seemed to be going pretty stir crazy as well being in lockdown without a life partner or cat, so it gets him out of his isolation and into my workshop/smoking area.

It's all been totally free of cost or anything but the minimum registration. I also use it occasionally to make recordings for other purposes simply by launching my own "chat", hitting record, then ending teh session when I've finished. Zoom then neatly compiles and spits out an MP4 after you close the session... 

By using a cheap usb video in device, and a cheap 8 channel security DVR which has a video output compatible with the usb device, you can then have multiple selectable camera angles, videostreams etc, which make collaboration even more flexible,although the zoom image is quite low res, so you can't go mad with the picture inpicture feature.  

Doesn't zoom forcibly terminate the meeting after its been running a good while longer than it was scheduled?

How about we whomp up our own zoom based helpline?

I'm a member of an inventor's group and we are currently collaborating online using zoom.to build a novel tabletop nuclear fusion device. We've found that we can maintain a 24/7 connection between two people (or one monitoring the apparatus from a safe distance! (only joking..) and we can extend multi people meetings indefinteley by means of rotating between identities. 

I'd envision maybe a panel of those of us who think we may have tools to share with others working several zoom identities between us?  On the aspergers "meetup" group they are going through organisers pretty fast, because (of course) we all have much more problems hitting a deadline like a pre-arranged zoom meeting, than we do reaching out when it suits US.

A zoom helpline run by volunteers, (who can allocate a computer to the zoom helpline, so as it can be kept monitored during your "shift" even if you need to have a zoom convo with someone else, like I certainly will as soon as me or one of the other guys produces neutron flux this week).could possibly work...

We'd need a list of "spergs with specialities", to form the panel, so if you find yourself out of your depth, you don't have to fob 'em off, or wing it. I would bet my *** that the majority of us turned out to be really helpful and good at the job, to be honest.

Any takers? (Please no, :c) I love having ideas, not so keen on having to follow though with the work when I have a good one!)_  

certainly not. and having a plethora of different autism charities is good for autistic recognition. But by the same token that doesn't mean it has to be an either or choice as to which people get involved in.

The NAS has the public recognition despite it providing lousy services other than its schools and residential care.

The officials at my local AS support group believe that there's some deal struck between the NAS and councils, the NHS, and schools to refer people only to the NAS and nobody else. Nobody seems to come to my local AS support group via a referral from public sector bodies. This is despite my local AS support group having informed the council and the local NHS trust about its existence numerous times over many years. Countless people have arrived at my local AS support group after battles with and disappointment from the NAS.

If this deal really does exist between the NAS and public sector bodies then it presents a large obstacle when it comes to establishing rivals to the NAS. Not an insurmountable one though... 

thats a pity

no thanks, i wont be doing that 

I wish there were more NAS advice hubs - I got a lot of support from one where I lived before but my nearest one is miles away now.  I think I could have made some friends eventually and we could have helped each other in various ways.

visibility. NAS is a well known autism charity in the UK. This place is probably the first autism forum any one googling "autism uk" would find.