Why campaign? Esther from our Cheshire West and Chester Branch explains...

As a branch, we have always believed that we needed to change the culture of what was happening in our authority in terms of education, health, social care etc for families caring for someone with autism. This would mean that families wouldn’t have to keep fighting the same battles over and over again. By working with the local authority we had achieved   a lot of change but then along came Local Government re-organisation, cuts to budgets etc.

All of a sudden, there were new faces. In fact, lots of changing faces. Somehow we had to build these relations again and again.

The Autism strategy gave us the building blocks that we could use to challenge practice and ask for services to be improved. As a branch, together with The NAS we were offering to be part of what needed to happen.

We have sat in lots of meetings, talked to lot of individuals and encouraged our members to sign up to The NAS' Push for action campaign. This enabled individuals to talk about what was important to them, what part of the strategy   would make their lives better if it was implemented.

We have sent out a survey, with the support of the local authority and PCT and Eleanor from NAS have written up the results. This has shown us that there is away to go in terms of what is needed for adults with autism in Cheshire West and Chester if they are to lead happy, useful and busy lives.  We then met with Officers from CWaC so that parents could talk directly to the people who are responsible for commissioning the services.  

In the past it has been difficult to get a meeting  with Chester MP, Stephen Mosley, but with all the publicity both nationally and locally about the Adult campaign, we now have a chance to meet with him. He has signed up to the Push for Action campaign and this has been reported in a number of local newspapers. We hope that he will be able to take back to Parliament the very specific issues that families in his constituency would like to see addressed as well as sharing our concerns with local councillors and officers. The support of MPs is crucial to driving the local development of services.

We are looking forward to seeing  better services in Cheshire West and Chester for all families and hope that this campaign will enable this to happen. 

Esther Fletcher

NAS Cheshire West and Chester Branch