According to the charity Ambitious About Autism, 1 in 100 children in the UK have Autism but a poll conducted on almost 4,000 parents of children with Autism by the charity reveals that almost half of parents have had to wait 18 months or longer to get a diagnosis which in the meantime wastes valuable time that can be spent receiving support and putting things in place to enable the child to properly achieve and progress as they get older.
But worse is that the charity says its research also shows that even when they do eventually get a diagnosis most parents are left in the blind on Autism without being offered help and support to enable parents to properly guide their child through life as they get older. So then even more time is wasted as parents themselves wade through the darkness before getting the support they already should have had.
In a number of cases the early support never comes, I know personally for myself I didn’t get any real support until I ended up breaking down in secondary school which had me then lose at least a year and a half of important education which very likely affected my end grades. Although I finally did find the support that enabled me to reach a Special Needs school I was once again left with no support after this when progressing into higher education where I once again broke down in college and is where my education ended.
It is only now once again that I have finally got into support again, this time on helping to transition into a life of work and learning about being more social. It is an unfortunate state of affairs that the system is still unable to properly handle people who suffer with Autism and that so often many are missing out on support as it simply isn’t being offered or clearly shown, leaving people not knowing what to do or where to go… wasting more and more valuable time.
My brother wasn’t even diagnosed with Autism until last year and his in his teens and is only just not getting support alongside me.
Even though the government has slowly recognized it needs to do more for people with Autism and for research into Autism and have passed some legislation into law in relation, it still isn’t enough and Autism charities are left to pick up the slack. The governments and laws poor recent record on Autism handling also isn’t convincing. But I remain in hope that one day things will improve and I am sure they will, the problem is that it will likely be slow going, that’s often politics for you.
For now, what I call on people to do is look into your local/regional Autism charity or charities such as Ambitious About Autism and spread their word to others and lend them support through donations and/or volunteering as well as using them to get support yourself and learn more about Autism. Continuing lobbying of the government to do more on Autism is also important as well as highlighting their injustices.
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