Hi, I'm Sara. My nine-year-old brother has autism and he is also non-verbal, so this isn't something I've read about in an article — it's something I've grown up with.

More than one in 100 people are autistic, and there are at least 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK. That's someone in nearly every classroom, every workplace, every street. Most of them spend their lives adapting to a world that wasn't built with them in mind, and far too many are left waiting for the support that would make that easier. More than 300,000 people in England are waiting for an autism assessment right now, and most have been waiting longer than the 13 weeks the NHS recommends.

Behind every one of those numbers is a person, and usually a family, trying to work out what to do next with very little help.

Families end up carrying most of it themselves. Parents become full-time advocates: chasing referrals, filling in forms, appealing decisions, explaining their child to people who have already made their minds up, often while cutting back work to find the time for it. Brothers and sisters learn early how to read a room and when to take up less space in it. None of that is anyone's fault. It's what happens when support arrives late, or never arrives at all.

That's why this matters to me. Money funds the advice line a parent rings when school isn't listening, the support that keeps an autistic child in education, and the campaigning that drags those waiting lists down. Understanding changes how autistic people are treated — funding is what gets that understanding to the people who need it.

That's why this matters. 300,000 people are waiting. Your donation means someone gets support today instead of in two years.