In this blog, our Chief Executive Caroline Stevens sets out how our charity is adapting to the heavy financial toll of coronavirus. We have had to take some difficult decisions about how and where to spend the funding available, including reshaping and scaling back some of our work. 

This has affected many parts of our charity over the past 12 months and meant losing dedicated and talented colleagues across some of our national programmes, such as in our fundraising and events teams. But by far our most difficult decision has been to close one of our helplines, our general Autism Helpline. This is a significant loss and we are deeply sorry we can’t continue it. But, as Caroline explains, this will allow us to continue other key activities, including our 117 branches and our campaign and policy work holding the Government to account and pushing for better support and services for all autistic people across the UK. We will get through this and we will continue to help tens of thousands of autistic children, adults and families each year, and to fight for your rights. 

Blog by Caroline Stevens

We always want to do more: to open more services, launch more campaigns and support more autistic people and families. But, as I explained in my blog in March, this is not the situation we’re in. We have contracts with local councils to fund our social care and education services. But we are facing a £1 million gap in our finances for our wider work largely due to cancelled fundraising and training events during the pandemic. This money usually funds our website and telephone or email information and advice, our campaigns for policy change and better public understanding, as well as our branches and employment programmes.

Funding gap

Thanks to our creative colleagues and generous supporters, we’ve successfully adapted our fundraising, training and conferences. Alongside some unexpected gifts in supporters’ wills and, significantly, the Government’s furlough scheme, we’re in a much better position than we had first feared. But the furlough scheme is set to end in September, and we can’t count on further legacies, which leaves us with a funding gap. 

Adapting parts of our work

Our Trustees have agreed to an investment of half a million pounds from our reserves to make sure we can continue to deliver the majority of these activities while we recover from the impact of the pandemic. But this is not a long-term solution, and it would be irresponsible to dig any deeper into our reserves. So, we have had to make decisions about how and where to use the resources we do have, so we can have as much impact as possible now, and in the future. 

This has affected every part of our charity, except our education and social care services. Most significantly, it’s meant losing dedicated and talented colleagues across some of our national programmes such as our fundraising and events team. 

Until now we’ve been able to avoid scaling back in ways that directly affect autistic people and families. 

But the depth of the funding gap we’re facing means that we have also had to identify services or activities to stop entirely. To inform this decision, we looked at the impact of all our work – consulting with autistic people and others who work with us, support us and use our services.  They were clear that their priorities were:

• mental health
• distressed behaviour
• education
• social care and benefits.

And so, despite limited resources, we are going to focus on these four challenges. We considered what reached and helped most people, and where we were doing something no other organisation could. We concluded we should focus our resources on three areas

• digital guidance for autistic people and families – our website is used by millions of people each year to find the help and advice they need
• our branch network – we have 117 branches across the UK, supporting tens of thousands of autistic adults, children and their families
• campaigning for policy change – we strive to establish meaningful change by influencing national autism strategies and other government policies in all four nations of the UK.

To continue these activities, we had to identify another to stop. And our trustees made the very difficult decision that while we will keep open five of our specialist helplines, we needed to close one – our general helpline.

Closing this helpline

Our general Autism Helpline has been an important and valued part of our charity for many years, providing information and advice to autistic people, their families, friends and carers. Our other five specialist helplines have expanded in recent years as enquiries have become more specific and cover: education rights and tribunals, school exclusions, inpatient mental health services, transitions and peer support (Parent to Parent). While our specialist helplines are partially or wholly funded by long-term committed funders, this is not the case with our general helpline which costs over £250,000 per year to run. 

We have considered other funding options, including the potential of a fundraising campaign to keep this helpline open. While we know our supporters would want to help, we’d need to secure long-term funding. This would require several hundred thousand pounds a year, on top of the funding we need to keep other vital services and activities going, and this unfortunately would not be feasible. 

We have now carried out a full consultation with the eight colleagues directly affected by the closure. I am sorry that our charity will be losing such a talented team, and am grateful for their professionalism and their dedication and commitment to the people they support. This helpline has also been supported brilliantly by committed volunteers who we hope will be able to continue volunteering on other projects in the future. 

Timeline for closure

• We will stop taking telephone calls on 19 May.
• We will stop taking email enquiries on 9 June when our general helpline will close completely, although we will continue to respond to the outstanding enquiries received before this date.
• There are more details on our help and support page, and we’ll be adding more information in the coming weeks, to help you find the guidance you need on our website and from other organisations.

Future

I know these changes will be difficult. The general helpline is still in demand and some people want to be able to talk to someone on a phone, rather than find information online. We are extremely sorry not to be able to continue this service. 

We are committed to doing all we can to mitigate the impact of the closure by continuing to improve the digital guidance and signposting on our website, as well as through our local branches, online community and specialist helplines. But we know it will be a loss for some autistic people and their families. If and when our funding situation changes, we will be looking to make further investments to strengthen how we can support you with guidance and advice.

We will continue to transform lives and change attitudes

I hope that this blog has explained the unprecedented situation we’re facing and why we need to adapt and scale back to get through it. It’s a significant and difficult loss, but it will allow us to continue to transform hundreds of thousands of autistic people’s lives and change the attitudes of key policy-makers and employers. We will continue to run specialist schools and social care services. We will continue to improve our website and be an even better resource for people needing information, guidance and advice. Our branches will help tens of thousands of autistic children, adults and families and we will hold governments to account, push for better services and highlight injustices through our policy and campaign work. 

We will still be the National Autistic Society and we remain committed to making society work for the 700,000 autistic people in the UK, and their families. Thank you for your continued support. 
 

Further Information

• To find out about other sources of information and guidance, visit: www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/help-and-support 
• To search advice and guidance on specific topics, go to: https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance
• For further information on ways to support our work and how you can get involved: https://www.autism.org.uk/get-involved   
• We're capturing feedback about the closure of this helpline, so we can understand the impact of this decision and to help us shape our activities for the future. If you wish to make a comment about the closure, please email Helpline.Comment@nas.org.uk 

*Blog updated on 04.05.21