Our AGM & ‘Extraordinary Lives’ conference that was scheduled for 10 December 2017 and then cancelled due to adverse weather conditions, will now take place on Sunday, 15 April, 2018, at The Kettering Park Hotel, Northamptonshire. All welcome. See ‘forthcoming events’ page.
Thank you for ‘clicking’ on our website. I hope that you will find much of what you read helpful, and, if so, please do not hesitate to get in touch. If you scroll further down this home page, you will find our information video. The video runs for approximately 37 minutes and has been specifically designed to be of assistance to the non-reader.
Despite our charity name indicating a preference for autism of the Asperger’s variant, we do in fact counsel all variants of autism, from lower-functioning to higher-functioning types.
All work that our charity undertakes is donation-led. We are an international (thanks to Skype/FT counselling) award-winning charity that has been operating since October 2008. Demand is high.
We do not receive any funding from the Lottery or Government currently. Funding from client donations is essential to the provision of this service therefore. A donation that is in the region of £35-£50 per hour (lower to higher incomes) for our counselling service is kindly requested. Action for Asperger’s is charitable by choice; this does not equate to less.
Please note that out of respect for client confidentiality, no client testimonials can be found on this website. We do, however, perform client satisfaction audits in September/October each year.
The client satisfaction audit for the year ending September 2016 did show:
- 90% of the clients who responded rated the service as “Excellent” or “Very Good”
- The unique AfA open-ended approach (i.e. counselling that is unlimited in terms of number of sessions on offer) to counselling had helped 93% of respondents to feel safe and secure.
- Additionally, over 60% of respondents felt that their sense of self had improved since becoming a client of AfA, with a further 27% stating that their sense of self was ‘slowly improving’*.
*The comments for this latter group of 27% (above) reinforced that this was primarily due to the short length of time since their diagnosis and consequently was still a work in progress.
We are currently evaluating satisfaction statistics for our year end September 2017, and can report the following:
- Over 75% of respondents to the survey felt that their mental health had improved since becoming a client of AfA – either significantly, or slowly improving day-by-day. The comments for the 25% who had not felt an improvement reinforced that this was primarily due to them having been a client for less than 6 months, and that their mental health was still work in progress. One person commented: “I’ve been a client for under 6 months. There’s a lot to think about, and I’m still processing.”
- The quality of service provided by Action for Asperger’s is seen as overwhelmingly positive: 79% of the clients who responded rating the service as “Excellent” and the remaining 21% rating the service as “Good”. Additionally, all 100% of the respondents went on to say that they would recommend Action for Asperger’s.
Note that we are happy to receive enquiries from undiagnosed autists as well as enquiries from formally diagnosed autists.
For up-to-the-moment news concerning AfA, please ‘like’ our Facebook page or ‘follow’ us on Twitter.
Elaine Nicholson, MBE
CEO & Counsellor
Email: [email protected]