Autism centre threatened with loss of funding

[Aspergers_Aspie]

There's an autism centre with a threat of funding to be withdrawn.
One ex service user has this viewpoint, please can I ask what people think?

I believe there is a petition going around to ask the council to reverse their decision to slash funding to the joke of a drop in centre. They have zero expert insight into Autism, the man who runs it, has nothing more than a college (UK college) education, but for the last decade or so has been given powers to make decisions effecting the lives of Autistic people, or for you young ones - people with Autism- while those with degrees in Neurology can only find jobs in places like Tesco. The CEO of the company which the centre operates under, earns more money than the Prime Minister. I know many people will think they are helping the lives of Autistic people by signing this petition, but the reality is, if funding is given elsewhere it will help all Neurodivergent people of the city. Not just whoever the manager likes or dislikes, I will be making up my own petition in the next few days, urging the Council not to reverse their decision and go ahead with slashing the funding, which will then help the actual people of Scotland and not fill the pockets of their CEO in England

 

[Outdated]

I find the notion that a lot of these sorts of services are funded by local councils to be a bit strange, it seems to be a pretty big burden for an individual city to support. Here any of these sorts of services are funded by state governments and often with the federal government also contributing.

To sort of put that in perspective for you - Australia is a federation of self governing states and has a federal government overlaying that. In some ways it's not all that different from the UK, with member countries having their own parliaments, etc. So in a UK version of what happens in Australia centres like the one you describe (Number 6?) would be funded mostly by the Scottish government, with the UK government also contributing.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

The US is experiencing a similar phenomenon. The current administration...consistent with their ideology...is to minimize/cut/eliminate federal funding for all manner of things, with this delusional idea that local government is able to support these programs, which they are not.... or... to have private companies run these programs.

The reality is that a lot of people get the rug pulled out from under them and they no longer can access their support systems.