NAS - anyone a member?

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I have misgivings. Is anyone an active member? I have been involved in a local branch but I am tiring.

It seems to me they are very much part and parcel of the system and in some ways present yet another obstacle. For example, the LA here used the existence of an Early Bird Plus course as a reason not to undertake a statutory assessment of a child of a friend. It seems the course is offered, stamped by the NAS, as a way of circumventing the need for specific intervention with lots of generic strategies while passing on high expectations of schools to parents e.g. 'your school could have a sensory room or do x,y,z' etc - all out of its own budget of course.

Also, here the ASD outreach team for the LA also seems to be connected closely to the NAS regional office. Pumping out more generic stuff. No need for specific or individualised assistance. Just keep banging on about theory of mind.

Now, I'm not against awareness raising and generic strategies but it seems to me that it fails to campaign on some very key issues e.g. school problems are not just about awareness raising, they are about money and statementing practices. CAMHS is not just about 'you need to know', it is about complete indifference, poor quality local provision, inadequate funding, lack of expertise etc.

Am I being too cynical?

I don't know much about NAS bit I think most public bodies and charities involve themselves heavily in 'awareness raising' which sounds great but is actually an excuse for a lot of people to shuffle papers, attend meetings, feel important and generally get off on thinking about how marvellous they are.

I refer you all once agian to my beloved Parkinson's Laws and also my current favourite quote

'We are what we do, not what we believe' (Batman)

Parkinson's First Law: Work expands to fill the time available.
Parkinson's Second Law: Expenditures rise to meet income.
Parkinson's Third Law: Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.
Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
Parkinson's Law of Sience: The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals published.
Parkinson's Law of Delay: Delay is the deadliest form of denial.
Parkinson's Law of Data: Data expands to fill the space available.
Parkinson's Law of Meetings: The time spent in a meeting on an item is inversely propotional to its value (up to a limit).
Parkinson's Law of 1000: An enterprise employing more than 1000 people becomes a self-perpetuating empire, creating so much internal work that it no longer needs any contact with the outside world.

The local(ish) independent autism support group became part of the NAS a couple of years ago and I let my membership lapse TBH. It really was just a signpost to other conferences and a few services but being in the sticks, somewhat, there was never a big enough active membership to get anything much going. I had a lot of respect for the few members who ran it and gave up lots of their time.

The NAS Earlybird course I went on I found extremely useful but mostly as a networking exercise with the other parents. It was run by 2 LA portage workers which seemed odd, as they didn't seem to get involved as portage with ASD as the DXs were generally too late for them. It was a very generic course and banged on a lot about hypersensory issues, when my DS was hypo-sensitive, but I found the iceberg and STAR behavioural analysis tools useful. It was at Earlybird that I found out about GF/CF and they had quite a few useful books to borrow including the Diet Intervention and Autism book. So, good for networking but the Hanen book, More than Words, was infinitely more useful than their course book. A parent at Earlybird recommended the Hanen book at about the same time as our SALT, and it was really good to have a parent's opinion as well as a professional's.