Is anyone here getting any help from NAS ?

justice said:

The local groups are all highly stage managed and provide a weekly coffee morning and half day playgroup/ recretion session at most.

I can second that. The independent groups tend to be more ASD person centric and hold more useful activities than the NAS groups do. For example, my local independent support group trains children how to ride a bike. The NAS group doesn't seem to have noticed that approximately half of all 10 year olds in Britain with ASD can't ride a bike. Personally I think that stabilisers are the culprit but the NAS hasn't picked up on this yet.

What is most tragic is that several independent ASD groups have been taken over by the NAS, on the impression that it will enable them to access plenty of money and resources that otherwise they would not access if they stayed independent, and transformed from groups which offer activities and support services to the local ASD community to coffee mornings for parents. More often than not such taken over groups end up channeling their support towards a very small number of people who require expensive services and associated PR stunts whilst ignoring larger numbers of people with higher functioning ASD who do not need them. One such group is run in the interests of about 4 or 5 people with traditional autism who require residential services or NAS schools but it no longer wants to know about 20 to 30 people in the area with high functioning AS who attend mainstream education or are working / looking for work because their needs are deemed to be less. This is despite the local group was originally established to support such people. The NAS has effectively destroyed support services rather than created them. Some of the parents of children with high functioning AS are now trying to start a new support group. They describe the NAS as a poisoned chalice.

A glossy magazine selling NAS related services and repetative stories, full of NAS propaganda and workshps teling you information already available from the web is the only other support.

Many parents have said similar things. They already fully well know that the internet is awash with information about ASD and JKP has more books on the subject than most people have time to read.

justice said:

The local groups are all highly stage managed and provide a weekly coffee morning and half day playgroup/ recretion session at most.

I can second that. The independent groups tend to be more ASD person centric and hold more useful activities than the NAS groups do. For example, my local independent support group trains children how to ride a bike. The NAS group doesn't seem to have noticed that approximately half of all 10 year olds in Britain with ASD can't ride a bike. Personally I think that stabilisers are the culprit but the NAS hasn't picked up on this yet.

What is most tragic is that several independent ASD groups have been taken over by the NAS, on the impression that it will enable them to access plenty of money and resources that otherwise they would not access if they stayed independent, and transformed from groups which offer activities and support services to the local ASD community to coffee mornings for parents. More often than not such taken over groups end up channeling their support towards a very small number of people who require expensive services and associated PR stunts whilst ignoring larger numbers of people with higher functioning ASD who do not need them. One such group is run in the interests of about 4 or 5 people with traditional autism who require residential services or NAS schools but it no longer wants to know about 20 to 30 people in the area with high functioning AS who attend mainstream education or are working / looking for work because their needs are deemed to be less. This is despite the local group was originally established to support such people. The NAS has effectively destroyed support services rather than created them. Some of the parents of children with high functioning AS are now trying to start a new support group. They describe the NAS as a poisoned chalice.

A glossy magazine selling NAS related services and repetative stories, full of NAS propaganda and workshps teling you information already available from the web is the only other support.

Many parents have said similar things. They already fully well know that the internet is awash with information about ASD and JKP has more books on the subject than most people have time to read.