He's not naughty! One mum's mission to make the world more autism aware!
He's Not Naughty! One mum's mission to make the world more autism aware!
When both of my sons were diagnosed with autism I was devastated! The world's percetion of autism is so negative that it's no wonder that I felt like my world had ended. It got much worse when I sent my precious five year old boy off to school, I had no idea that his autism would not be understood and he would be treated like he was naughty. His mistreatment led to him almost having a breakdown and me home schooling him for 5 months. There are no words to express the stress and upset this caused to my family. This is happening every day to families all over the UK and it needs to stop.
I was shocked to learn that autism awareness was not a compulsory topic on teacher training courses. With 1 in 100 children in the UK currently being diagnosed how are teachers expected to know how to deal with autism if they aren't given this training?
I wrote and self published a book to help teachers and classmates understand autism better. "He's Not Naughty! A Children's Guide to Autism." www.hesnotnaughty.co.uk My aim is to raise enough money to give every primary school in the UK a copy of e-book to be used for staff training and helping classmates to understand why children with autism behave the way they do. The initial £10,000 will help me reach 2000 schools. That's just £5 per school. I'd need an overfunding of £110,000 to reach all of the 24,372 primary schools in the UK.
I've also taken my campaign for 'compulsory autism awareness training for all teaching staff' to 10 Downing Street and the House of Commons and I'm now invited to attend All Party Parliamentary Group for Autism (APPGA) meetings, making sure our Government are aware of issues affecting people living with autism in the UK. The Government has confirmed that this is now on their agenda but in the meantime, my aim is to give all primary schools a quick and easy way to tackle this issue which will ultimately make an immediate difference to all the chlidren in the UK living with autism and being bullied by class mates and mistreated by teahcing staff, all of which can lead to mental health issues including depression, self-harm and sometimes even ending their own life.
I'm attending an APPGA meeting on 9th May 2016 at The House of Commons to discuss initial teacher training with Minister of State for Children and Families, Edward Timpson who will be in attendance. Please show your support for this campaign by voting and pledging so I can prove to Ed why he should make this happen now!
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PLEASE HELP ME MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
This project successfully funded on 12th August 2016