The National Autistic Society is really proud of its campaigning heritage. It’s absolutely central to our vision of creating a society that works for autistic people. It’s part of our DNA. 

Together with tens of thousands of autistic people, family members and other allies, we’ve achieved a lot. The ground-breaking Autism Acts in England and Northern Ireland got autism on the statute books, as well as autism strategies in all four nations. We’ve made the scandal of diagnosis waiting times a priority for the NHS in England, raised the fundamental human rights issues of autistic people being wrongly detained in hospital, and raised the autism understanding of millions of people through our Too Much Information campaign. 

But the truth is that these steps, though important, aren’t going to fix things. Until the day that we can look at our Moonshot Vision and say that the job is done – that autistic individuals are valued, their power and choice maximised, they’re supported throughout their life, that spaces are accessible and stigma is ended for good – we have much more to do.

That’s why I am so pleased that campaigning is such a huge part of what we will be doing for the next three years. When I was working on the strategy with lots of others, the importance of campaigning really leapt out. Through Transforming Society and Influencing Standards, we can keep pushing at the boundaries. 

It won’t be easy. We know that economic pressures mean there’s less funding for vital services. And long-standing issues like the social care crisis and staff retention make progress even harder. That’s why we’ll work alongside autistic people and their families to have the very strongest evidence, to make the most powerful case for change. Together we can prove how important it is to create a society that works for autistic people and that’s what our strategy is about.

My life with the National Autistic Society started at birth: my autistic older brother went to an NAS school. When I started working at the NAS over a decade ago, his experiences and those of the people I’d worked with as a careworker were the ones I had in my mind. But the hundreds (maybe thousands?) of other people’s experiences I’ve learned from over the years have shown me just how wide-ranging the changes we need to see in society are. So we are determined to highlight experiences of as many different autistic people as we can. People with different stories to tell, but wanting to see the same outcome. 

That’s why I am so excited about our new strategy and how as an employee, a brother and an ally I can help make sure our vision becomes reality. I hope you are too. 

Tim Nicholls is Head of Influencing and Research at the National Autistic Society