Organisational History

Treating Autism is an organisation born of both hope, and of frustration.

Hope, that biomedical treatment modalities may help our children, and frustration that the information required to learn is so disperate, particularly when looking for UK and European specific resources. If you have typed 'autism' into Google you'll know what we mean!

The organisation, originally called 'Alternative Resources for Autism' (ARA), was set up in February 2005.  Initially, ARA formed a Yahoo group for parents who were interested in, or undertaking, the biomedical approach to treating their children.  ARA also formed a committee and adopted a constitution. 

Having a constitution and a committee has enabled the organisation to apply for grant funding to further its aims.  We were successful in obtaining our first grant of just under £5,000 from Awards for All (Lottery small grants) in April 2005.  This has enabled us to buy IT equipment, library books, fund places on autism related conferences and develop the membership pack.

In May, the founding crew went searching for more parents keen to help. We finally all met in person in June 2005. After an exhausting brainstorming session we came up with a plan of action, elected officers, agreed on the application for charitable status and decided on a name change to ............. Treating Autism.

Why Treating Autism? Because Autism is Treatable! thats why! We wanted the message to be simple and direct. The phrase evokes a response. That may be "who are they trying to kid?", or "I didn't know that was possible - tell me more". It really doesn't matter, as long as the word gets out.

Parents always say "if only we had known sooner"............lets reduce that number by raising awareness and curiosity until the information is considered mainstream.

Treating Autism is about methodically addressing each of the needs indentified for your particular child. Educational, sensory and biomedical interventions complement each other. 

The group met with Steve Edelson PhD from the Autism Research Institute in Amercia. Steve was very generous with his time and in sharing his experiences of raising awareness and supporting research projects. He was very patient, answered all our questions and offered suggestions for the development of the organisation.

The majority of effort so far has focused on developing of the website and membership pack, which began in mid August. We are delighted that at the end of November the site had already received in excess of 2,000 visitors!

A talk was organised in London on Sulphation Issues with Michael Lang, during his recent visit to the UK.

In September we met with Dr Franco Versella and his colleagues at the University of Westminster, to share experience's of promoting change in respect of state funding for biomedical and other treatments for autism.

Three committeee members were honoured to attend the Practitioners Training Day at the Action Against Autism Conference in Edinburgh during October. The overseas speakers are very keen to come back to the UK for conferences and to help us in raising awareness.

We are hoping to run a two day, biomedical treatment focused conference in the spring of 2007.

Mandi was interviewed by Terri Small about her son's experiences with biomedical intervention and her role in Treating Autism, for Autism One Radio on February 7th 2006. You can listen to the interview

Our Secretary, Zoe Thompson, was short-listed for Sheila McKechnie award on 21st February 2006. The Sheila McKechnie Foundation was formed in 2005 to support the next generation of campaigners. The Sheila McKechnie awards are an entirely new initiative, designed to give emerging campaigners the extra support and strategic advice that could bring their campaigns to `take-off' mode.

There were six award categories: conflict resolution; consumer action; economic justice; health and social care; social inclusion and transport.  Zoe was short-listed in the health and social care
category with Treating Autism's campaign to raise awareness of biomedical approaches to treating autism. 

·    Children with autism are medically ill
·    Autism is treatable
·    Preliminary research findings on potential treatments are being ignored
·    Funding is urgently needed to explore/validate these treatments
·    Children with autism have as much right to treatment as any other child who is medically ill.

On 6th April 2007 Treating Autism received notification of approval for charitable status.

Our unique membership pack is now available. We accept cheques by post and online payment via PayPal to include debit and credit cards.

Please support our fundraising efforts by purchasing a membership pack and tell a friend about it so they can buy one too!