In the early years of living with Tommy and his autism it really felt like we were on our own. We were given the diagnosis at the local children’s hospital and at the end of this appointment we were given another appointment in 6-months time to see how we were doing. That was it.  We went in with the hope of finding an answer and came out with a diagnosis of autism, no explanation as to what caused it, being told there was nothing we could do to fix it, and just an offer of a follow up to see how we were doing.

No-one we knew had any experience of autism although we found many that were happy to give us advice. So we were on our own, and as mentioned in the blog ‘Don’t Panic I’m In Charge’, we resorted to the internet.

After a year or so I began to connect with others in the local area in South Wales UK, joined in with some National Autistic Society events and met some lovely mums who are now life-long friends. I began to learn so much that I would never have stumbled across on the internet. I learnt that we could get some free nappies as Tommy was over 3 years old, I found out about the ‘Rebounders’ club from yesterday’s post, I discovered resources to learn more about autism and I began to connect with the huge community of autism families on Facebook, where even more information was being shared by families who are travelling the same journey.

I learnt that there is in fact a lot of help and support out there and no parent should need to feel alone. But it was all a bit hit and miss as to whether or not I would come across this information if I didn’t access Facebook regularly or meet up with friends that often.

It was while having a cup of tea at our local Ikea that an idea for a directory of resources and information for autism families came into my head. The Autism Directory was born.

Yes there are other websites with loads of information and resources on them, however they tended to be quite specialised in a certain topic or area of interest, and nothing I found really pulled these together. The idea for The Autism Directory was never to repeat or duplicate all this fabulous resource out there, but simply to allow a parent like me to have a place where I could find something easily by being directed to all that’s available whatever my interest was at that time.

I began with simply adding things like websites and documents I found to a spread-sheet. This grew quickly and more ‘categories’ of information were being added daily. Very soon it became too complicated to manage as a spread-sheet so I decided to create a website to access it all.  Not having ever created a website I found an easy to use software package where I could load up pages with little technical knowledge.  This was to become the first version of the directory website we have today.

The Autism Directory was launched in November 2010 at Tommy’s specialist autism school, Ashgrove, in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales.  It was launched by a Welsh Assembly member Janet Ryder who also chaired the Cross Party Group on Autism for the Welsh Government, and supported by Ashgrove’s Head, Chris Britten.

The website quickly grew and I had help from local students on placement from ‘Go Wales’, and within a year we had our registered charity status from the Charities Commission.

Since then the website has had a few face-lifts and been completely re-engineered to provide more functionality and interaction. We have a team on people working on it each week, Trustees and businesses that support us and recently we have partnered with another great autism organisation; Living Autism. It’s become quite an operation and has a life of its own now.

The focus of The Autism Directory remains the same today – to help autism families get the help they need by signposting them to all the amazing resources there are out there. However, we can’t possibly know all that there is, and rely on others to add what they know too for the benefit of other families, just as they would if they were chatting at a coffee morning or while out with the children.

The message is simple. You are not alone.

With love and gratitude

Nadine.