Project aim
Our aim is to help families with an autistic member find carers and for carers to find families that need support.
About the project
We are a start up charity with BIG plans.
Ultimately we want to build a specialist centre to support families affected by autism. First things first though! Initially we are going to build a website that enables those families who need carers find them and also help the carers find work. There is currently a desparate need for this across the UK although we'll start local we intend to roll this out over time.
Why do we need carers?
Our son Ben has severe autism and ADHD. He can't sit still and desn't sleep at all well. When Ben was 2 he passed all the usual GP checks, however his speech didn't develop to form sentences. Then to our dismay at around 5 his speech that he did have started to fade away and he was left with no words whatsoever. He is starting to rebuild his speech but he is 10 this year. He continues to be a happy and active young man who specialises in tiring out the big people! This makes looking after him all the time very challenging for us leaving little if any time to work around the house, fix what's been broken or spend time together as a couple.
A continual battle for us, even though we live in London is that it's really hard to find carers for our son. Speaking to other families there are many of us who are in the same situation. Bizarrely when we do get carers and talk to them they are often trying to find more families to work with but struggle to find them.
Hey presto our idea to build a website was brought to life. We have had several quotes in and the going rate is between £5,000 - £10,000.
I have previous experience of overseaing the building of websites so I am well versed in managing projects such as this, so rest assured your money will be well spent.
Check out http://familiesaffectedbyautism.co.uk for more information about us and our longer term plan for building a centre. You can also fill out our survey if you have a family member this will mean that when we get to build it we can make sure it caters correctly for those we're looking to support.
We hope you can afford to donate something towards this as it will really help to change lives.