The Dog, The Handwashing. The ASD child

Autism in UK costs economy £28 billion a year

Special Needs Mum.. On Holiday

Please help this very SPECIAL girl
This is a story about a gir with VERY special needs. Please read it and donate if you can – her parents need to raise £300,000 by Christmas tohelp fund life-saving treatment in the US for Neuro-blastoma: The story so far.. Robyn Higgins In May of this year our beautiful 7yr old daughter Robyn was diagnosed with  Stage 4 Neuroblastoma, a rare and aggressive form of childhood cancer.  The tumour was growing from her pelvi

New Autism Act Passes Final Hurdle
The National Autistic Society is today celebrating the passing into law of the Autism Act. The following is from their website: The Autism Bill has made it through its final parliamentary stage and will now become the Autism Act. The Act is the first ever disability-specific law in England. The Autism Act started out as a Private Members Bill, drafted by The National Autistic Society (NAS) and taken forward by Conservative MP Cheryl Gillan. The Bill was backed by a coalition of 16 autism organisations and had overwhelming parliamentary support, being backed by all the main political parties. The adult autism strategy The Autism

Don’t Write Me Off – NAS campaign
The National Autistic Society has today released figures showing that only 15% of adults with an autustic spectrum disorder are in full time paid employment.This means that 85% of the 300,000 people with an ASD may only find part-time work, most probably low-paid and rely on family for support and benefits for income. The NAS also says that many of those who do rely on government help are finding it extremely difficult to navigate the benefits system since changes were made to incapacity benefit.

Daily Mirror Launches Caring For Carers Campaign
The Daily Mirror is today launching a new “Caring For Carer’s” campaign to highlight the disgraceful situation regarding the level of benefits for people who care for disabled relatives and friends. At the moment, Carer’s Allowance is just over £53 a week, no matter how many people you care for. Both my sons qualify for Disability Living Allowance for their ASD and so I am entitled to receive this paltry amount. But, should I be lucky enough to be able to find a part-time job that I can do while they are at school, I cannot earn more than £95 a week net or I lose the benefit. Before I had children I could earn up to £20

Back to school – but is it the right one?
For the first time since my sons started at their special school, this term we have had no fees to pay as they are both now being funded by the local LEA. I’ve written in post passim about finding our way through the special needs “jungle” of statementing and I hope if you are in that position now you will find some of the things on this site useful. Indeed, I am only too aware of how many people are going through the process and are having a much tougher time of it than we did. We applied at a time when our LEA was reassessing the way it looks at Statutory Assessment, Statementing and Funding. For children with high-functioning AS, like our boys, it r