My 14 year old son was diagnosed with Autism at the age of 11; he has not attended his specialist school for the last 8 months and has only left the house once in the last 3 weeks due to anxiety levels so high they limit his ability to function on an everyday level. He struggles with daily meltdowns of huge ferocity and controls his world minutely with increasing OCD behaviour.

I have battled for every one of these 8 months to get my son and my family the help we so desperately need. In my County of Devon it has become very apparent that I live in the wrong postcode area and as a family we have been passed around from service to service. We are told ‘Autism isn’t in our remit’ or ‘Anxiety is part of Autism and not a mental health issue’. Anxiety and OCD behaviours are not core symptoms of Autism and therefore should not be treated as such. At least 40% of children on the spectrum will have at least one co existing mental health diagnosis alongside their diagnosis of Autism.

I have a desperately unhappy child who should be choosing his GCSE options instead he will soon have missed an entire academic year at school and I fear the happy child (who happened to be on the spectrum) we once knew will be lost to us forever unless a service steps up and starts to help us.

Thousands of children with Autism needlessly face a future of Mental Health problems. The NHS need to make changes to enable them to access help and the government need to legislate to ensure those children and their families receive the support they desperately need. Parents battle with local authorities for months and sometimes years to get the help that a child not on the spectrum would receive automatically.

Mental Health services for Autistic children are lacking or nonexistent in most areas resulting in a post code lottery with poor understanding from Clinical Commissioners and confusion as to which service should help these children and their families.

Autism is the only disability with its own act yet it has been poorly implemented, the government must invest in making changes to services to ensure these children do not fall between the cracks. Clinical Commissioners should ensure that services comply with NICE guidelines which at this time they do not.

Help is needed now to ensure that these children are able to build brighter, happier and stronger futures. Without this help they will fall through the cracks and never be given the assistance they desperately need.