Aspies For Freedom

...... but their financial accounts say otherwise. In person at the protest we were told they were funding services but were unable to pin them down on what services specifically. Looking at their financial accounts I can only find donations to the autism genome project and not a single service. I have sent an email to clarify this but it so far looks quite disturbing.

looks like autism speaks version of finding the anwsers autistic people want is getting rid of us and nothing more.  meanwhile, they want more people to get diagosed and put into aba and cheleate and say they are worthless evil monsters so they can promote to more of their friends how autism ruins lives, and create this consperacy unitl autism speaks finds the way to get rid of every single autistic gene.

also more diagosis=more autistics found=more people to target.

I don't believe that Autism Speaks UK can legally fund services.  Their objects are listed as follows.

Prevention of autism can only have one meaning for me.  That is to prevent us being born.  There's no mention there of supporting autistics or educating the public.  We need to make sure people know that Autism Speaks doesn't do anything for autistics except try to make sure we're not a "problem" any more.

That is actually an extremely good point - by law a charity cannot spend funds on anything but the objects. How did I miss this?

Um ... isn't there some overlap between what they call treatment and what anybody might call services?  I really think there must be.

EDIT:
For example I am thinking of the things related to communication, whether it's controversial speech therapy or what...  There must be some things that could be called "treatment" as well as "services".
Unless "treatment" only means DRUGS and/or ABA...  And I'm sure many people, even though we might not agree with them, would consider ABA as a "service".

The parents going to the help section of Austism Speaks universally seem to think of ABA as services.  Most issues raised are answered by comments like, "X has a treatment program you could try," or "therapy Y might help."  There aren't many even suggesting that, gee, the parent might be in the best position to figure out what is really bothering their child and how to accomodate it.  And, everyone seems to be looking for money to pay for this and for that ... I actually said to my husband the other day, "are we missing something?  Are we supposed to be getting government money because our child is Aspergers?"  You know, I don't even want to go down that road.  All children have different needs and certainly some of my son's have cost us a bundle (um, the private part-time nanny when he was a baby comes to mind, and we didn't even know he was Asperger's then, just, well, needy), but how can I say my child's needs trumps someone elses?  The big things like special education services (extra help with writing, etc) are received through the public school.  And much of that mentioned money goes for the crap ... like Chelation, which I know you all are so entirely fond of (kidding).  ANYWAY, I think by "services" they would mean services to the PARENTS on behalf of the children (and maybe some books on ABA and reference materials on DAN doctors ...).

Oh, and the famous video is probably considered a "service."

Which leads me to ask - what kinds of services do you WANT?  Just curious.

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The services that come to mind are the ones that enable independent living, like programs that would train and certify according to special interests, or job agencies specializing in aspie applicants and offering more than entry-level positions.

Some people that have multiple things going on in addition to and surrounding autism, need a lot of services, that are practical life stuff like helping to take care of their house and their hygiene and things so they can live independently.  

Some people don't have physical problems, but might have problems getting stuff done that they could do, but don't do it because of some processing difficulty.
[Edit: this part was intentionally vague because I am trying to describe something I don't entirely understand, but I know it does happen.  I figured the less details, the less chance to be inaccurate.]

[tangent] I wish I could get someone to pay my bills and do other paperwork for me, but I can just about manage to remember and do that properly, so ... OK for now.  Paperwork is extremely more overwhelming and less natural for me (and for my -also aspie- mother!) than for most people, though... but then I know NT people who have the same problem.  My boss says I'm "paperwork-challenged" but that people should give me a break because of being good at the actual teaching aspect.[/tangent]

People with learning, language, and processing disabilities associated with autism, such as dyslexia(?), aphasia, dysphasia, hyperlexia, speaking difficulties, etc., could use help in higher education, too.  Someone like my husband who is brilliant but because he is dysphasic he has an awfully hard time with grammar in his own language, and on top of that is an immigrant dealing with a new language... he might get a dx so he can get extra help in the language aspects of his college classes.  These helps seem to be available in many places but I'm sure they could use more funding.

There is a lot of intangible stuff they could help with, too.
All these awareness campaigns instead of making awareness of how autism is a curse, could make awareness of what it's like for autistics, and how we might process things differently and that's why NTs and us have communication confusions ... just so we don't have to explain our very existence every time we turn around...
People know that some people are blind and some people are deaf, although I find my students usually don't know a lot about deaf culture becos the little i know from my mother's deaf friends is news to them... I guess awareness is still needed around most disabilities.

I like that idea!

and I think i seconded one of your others.