Closure of Autism Understanding Scotland

This year has been really tough for many charities. While there is much for us to be proud of at AUScot, we have found ourselves in an increasingly difficult position.

Like many charities this year, we have faced significant issues in attracting longer term funding, and having that funding arrive in a timely manner. This has been exacerbated by the fact we are a relatively new charity meaning many funds were simply not open to us, and many funders deciding to pivot away from supporting autistic people. The decision by the Scottish Government not to fund services for autistic children, having previously funded this for three years through the National Post Diagnostic Fund pilot, with very little notice, was a huge blow to autism charities and autistic persons organisations across Scotland.

This has made it increasingly difficult to maintain our staffing levels and services. It also put immense pressure on those staff we were able to retain, resulting in burnout. The board has worked with others looking at options to continue, however the lack of long term funding, and a lack of permanent staff from the end of January, has left us in a position where we need to close down the charity. We are beyond devastated that this is the case. This is not a decision we came to lightly, or that we wanted to make. We ask that you are gentle with our staff team while interacting with us as we are all doing our best in our time remaining.

We will be shutting down our services at the end of January, and our staff and Board are working hard to wind things up between now and then. We will be closing down our various services incrementally over the next month and a half.

We realise that this is distressing news to many of you and want to reassure people that we have worked hard to avoid this outcome. Many of those involved remain dedicated to the autistic community and are seeking ways to continue supporting as they can, this includes trying to find alternatives venues for the gaming group.

Marion and Flick, along with some volunteers, will continue running Autistic Pride Aberdeen each year.

We are making sure our resources section remains available, and we will provide details on that soon. There are many great organisations and autistic led pages on social media to follow, we hope that people we have supported will be able to access support from some of these sources.

We want to say a huge thank you to all of you for helping to make the community AUScot created so beautiful. We have loved all of our events, loved your comments on social media, loved your amazing emails. We have loved our 1:1 support sessions, groups, training, and all of the other services we have provided. While it is heart wrenching to leave, we go with many happy memories. Thanks to all of you!

AUScot Staff and Board