Three years ago Dr Sara Ryan worked on a study funded by the Wellcome Trust exploring the experiences of people diagnosed with autism and parents of children/adults with autism. The findings were published at;

http://www.healthtalkonline.org/disability/LifeontheAutismspectrumAdults

http://www.healthtalkonline.org/disability/LifeontheAutismspectrum_Parents

The Department of Health have funded us to extend these two projects to create a larger, more comprehensive resource including the experiences of more people with autism (aged 16+), siblings (aged 16+) and grandparents. We would like to include the experiences of people at the more severe end of the spectrum too.

This work is part of the Department of Health's work coming out of the Autism Strategy and will be completed in March 2011. I wondered if you would be able to distribute details about the study to your members. The project is covered by MREC approval and I will be recruiting participants until the end of November 2010. For further details please contact Sara by phone on 01865 289374 or e-mail sara.ryan@dphpc.ox.ac.uk