Council’s Autistic Services And Support Are ‘Sub-Standard’

Parents and carers have blasted west Berkshire’s local authorities in the wake of a survey which shows they provide autistic people with a sub-standard service. The Berkshire Autistic Society poll showed 89 per cent of its members feel autistic children and adults are receiving insufficient support from their councils.

The 61 respondents, twothirds of whom live in west Berkshire, condemned education, counselling, employment opportunities, housing and family support as unsatisfactory and hard to obtain.

They claim autistic children are not “understood” by schools, facilities for autistic adults are non-existent and mental health professionals and social work-ers have little knowledge of the disability.

The society’s project manager, Robert Pasterfield, said: “Local authorities are not providing the services that they should be. “We are in an extremely affluent part of the country but the services are still inadequate. The authorities can’t give help to everybody to the extent that they require, because the money is not there. Services are basically supplied on the basis of resource rather than need.”

Woodley mother, Alison Coulson, has faced problems in the past with her 13-year-old autistic son, Chris. When Mrs Coulson chose to send Chris to The Forest School in Winnersh, after he had been bullied during his time at Woodley’s Rivermead Primary, Wokingham Borough Council refused to pay for his transport.

He should be entitled to free transport but the council said that Mrs Coulson should have picked a secondary school nearer their Fairwater Drive home. So for a year the catering assistant was forced to take Chris and her three-year-old daughter back and forth to Winnersh, until younger son Ben joined the same school and could accompany his brother.

Mrs Coulson said: “It was a nightmare. I was fighting it for a while but I just gave up. They should have provided taxis or some sort of transport but they said he was not entitled to it. It was like getting blood out of a stone. I wasn’t going to take him to a school where his life was in danger.”