I cannot believe that I have not come across this organisation before. I have a 12 year old son with ASD, very intelligent,  manipulative and absolutley adorable. His behaiour has always been challenging, however with puberty in the 'wings' our problems are changing. My son attends a residential school monday to friday and when he was home this weekend I had to major escapes, both requiring Police attendance. As a single parent, who is also training to be an OT, I feel that my skills to manage are being questioned by social services! With no respite at present in place and the summer holiday rapidly approaching I have that annual sense of dread. What needs to be put in place now are strategies to enable change, guess I could just do with a hint to what they might actually be!

debbie, you are right. im my experience many day schemes cater for the more higher functioning autistic or for the more predictable autistic person  ( the easier ones). When my sons behaviour got challenging, i thought i was going to a progress meeting, and they kicked him out with no prior warning! i was gobsmacked, so was our social worker. They had made very limited efforts to find the cause of his behaviour and kicked him out! honest, no where else would do that, would they? i appealed , mainly because of the way we were handled, and the  regional director,in my opinion made a half baked attempt to look at it again, and then i got an arrogant response telling me it was final and they were not going to correspond with me again. I have written to my MP a fortnight ago about them, and she has written to the chief executive and I am awaiting a response. What they have done is unforgiveable given they recieve considerable funding from local authorities and from national government sources. i would expect more.