NAS - A charity or a business ?

hi - it's no surprise the nas receives the majority of its money from education + social services depts throughout the country.  The nas provides schools which LEAs send children to.  Social services have to pay social workers, care workers etc for children and adults.  The nas will also do training, so councils will sometimes send some relevant staff.  That has to be paid for as well.  At a higher level the nas must have a Board of Directors, Trustees etc.  Whatever your opinion on rates of pay, Chief Execs don't come cheap, unless you get a useless one.  After all the nas is a national organisation + the organisation has to have a strategic direction.  No-one is going to agree all the time with everything the nas does but I don't think they're a corrupt-government-sponsored organisation.

Charities are traditionally private enterprises run on a not for profit basis which provides a service that governments should provide but do not.

If the government wants to spend money on a particular cause then it should do so through their own public sector institutions rather than via a charity. I do not want to see my taxes funding charities that I do not support, and neither do I want to give my money to a charity which pays it senior officials obscenely high salaries.

£5.5m is probably more money than what all the independent ASD support groups in Britain put together receive.

NAS11866 said:

Arran

Can you tell me where you found that information? I am a 'member' of another charity and would be interested to know information about that one too.

I found it on the Fake Charities website. The entry for the National Autistic Society says that "This charity receives around 90% of its income from the state — from the provision of services that are paid for by local government".

The statement of accounts for the NAS details income and expenditure. On page 12 it states "Fee income, mainly from statutory bodies for delivery of services, accounted for 89% (89.1% in 2009/10) of income – that is £81.2m (£78.7m in 2009/10)". In other words, money from the government. On page 13 it states "Voluntary funding for the year stood at £7.5m (£6.8m in 2009/10) and careful controls remained in place so that the total cost of generating that income fell to £2m in 2010/11 (£2.2m in 2009/10)". This means that a paltry £5.5m of the total £91.3m income of the NAS comes from voluntary donations after factoring out the costs of collection and processing.

When I was at school I had a lot of the problems that AS children have now but Aspergers was unknown in the UK then. Asperger's paper wasn't translated into English until 1991.  So there is an increase in adults being diagnosed because it wasn't picked up when we were children. Most of us have had all sorts of other diagnoses before getting to AS. There has also been a big push, at least in the area of the country I live in, to look out for children with AS whereas in the past very few people got diagnosed and only the ones with "classic autism".  So the estimates on the proportion of the population has been revised upwards.  I don't think there is an increase in the incidence but there is in noticing it. I think it may carry on rising for a bit yet.

I am not convinced there is an increase in autism,

it used to be normal for children to be quiet and listen at school,

Being stoic or taciturn or self reliant was a virtue.

Now modern admania is hyping the image everyone has to be excited and rushing around to spend lots of money to impress people and put on an image.

The values of society are changing, TV demands facial expressions and emotion to make it watchable, a soap or film about people who are well organised, methodical and repetetive would be hard to sell.

 People get their values and expectations from TV and films now, not the church and books as before.

They expect more exaggerated hype, people with less emotional overacting seem boring and a danger to the party.

Autism is simply better understood and documented than it was before. There is NO evidence that autism is a 'side-effect of the modern age', although it is possible that the predisposition genes for autism were valuable from an evolutionary perspective.

And there is no 'epidemic': autism is NOT a disease. An 'epidemic' is the wrong word to use in this context, because before greater awareness, people with autism still existed (including aspergers). As far as we are aware, they always have done!

I do think there is something akin to an epidemic growing with ASDs.  It's either an unintended side-effect of the modern age, evolution and nature experimenting, or there is something going on with governments that we don't know about.

~Because they are not a real charity - they are being used as a buffer by the government so that the government can wash their hands of the growing number of people with ASD and limit spending.

urspecial said:

[quote][/quote]

Because my taxes are paying for it. Nearly 90% of the income the NAS receives comes from the government with just over 10% coming from donors.

Other ASD charities and support groups have to stand on their own two feet financially so why can't the NAS?

Really!   

Is 90% of NAS's work funded by Gov?  

Ditto

Arran said:

Because my taxes are paying for it. Nearly 90% of the income the NAS receives comes from the government with just over 10% coming from donors.

Other ASD charities and support groups have to stand on their own two feet financially so why can't the NAS?

Really!   

Is 90% of NAS's work funded by Gov?  

The organisation seems to TOP heavy in names,, like some sort of who's who's of the establishment, been on a committee of a committee. It is a government agency, and this forum is just data collection.

I think the establishment takes an interest in Autism because it "as one american scientist journal said in America, America needs more people with Autism for silicon valley and Darfa, America has a brain drain, so having(aka creating) Autism maybe in the national interest" INTERESTING !

You will find quite a few of the establishment will have aspergers, half the SAS will have the condition, I believe there is two types of Aspergers,, HOT and COLD, the COLDS are the non-feeling ones, who feel no pain physically or emotionally who run the government. The HOTS are the scientists and original thinkers.

Hyperspecialism traits in a diminishing curve industrial plantation model is worth value, even if it is just 1% newtons or einsteins.

Honestly, I would not mind a room in a salt cosmic neutron lab mine or nano silicon neutral shadow entanglement fusion lab mine, or even a more central involvement with Darpa, or some other cutting edge "violet light project" .

Because my taxes are paying for it. Nearly 90% of the income the NAS receives comes from the government with just over 10% coming from donors.

Other ASD charities and support groups have to stand on their own two feet financially so why can't the NAS?