Hi All,

Thank you for visiting the Network Autism Gofundme page. My names Caroline Traa and I’m mum to a gorgeous grown up Autistic girly, Rebecca.

I found it hard when Rebecca was little to know what to do to help her most. Rebecca was non verbal until she was over 7 years old and not toilet trained until 12! Rebecca had such bad gastrointestinal problems - there was lots of screaming and unregulated behaviours, poor eating, sleeping etc.

I adored my daughter and studied everything I could on many issues relating to autism to help as much as I could - Courses, conferences, consultations…. It felt so overwhelming at times!

We did a little home ed programme to help Bex as much as possible and eventually things changed, Rebecca went to school, my son came along, life continued.

I started studying for a Masters at the University of Manchester on Profiund and Multiple Learning Disabilities and Multi Sensory Impairments. For my Masters thesis I wanted to prepare a parents pack with all the tips and tricks I’d learned over the years. This later became my book ‘What Can I Do Tomorrow?’ And the foundation for Network Autism…

As Rebecca got older and left school I created a lovely social enterprise for adults with additional support needs. It ran for 5 years and ended due to Covid when it became apparent that adults with ASN’s weren’t going to return to services quickly.

I kept thinking how hard it must’ve been for families with autistic kids during Covid and thinking about all the things we had tried over the years, and whether other parents could benefit.

The idea for Network Autism took shape in my mind and became a reality 3 years ago this month in August 2022. The idea was to do 2 things - (1) to create support groups for families who might like that in their area AND (2) to create a beginners online course for newly diagnosed families to help with all those questions I had back then, ‘What’s the best way to toilet train?’ ‘ How can I help Rebecca communicate’

It’s been great fun but we have hardly started! How many more families can we reach in Scotland and beyond?

For everyone who has been a part of our journey so far, thank you so much!

There’s so much still to do, we hope you can help us to help other families. Every penny raised will go towards buying more toys creating more groups.

Thank you so much,

Caroline & all our Network Autism families x