Autism and ADHD Resources for Parents You Can Trust
The internet is full of advice about autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). When you are worried, tired, and trying to help your child, it can be hard to tell what is helpful and what is simply loud. If you are not sure where to begin, start with the National Autistic Society for autism information, ADHD UK for ADHD information and IPSEA for your child’s rights in school, or with my own free guides below, which are written by a qualified clinical psychologist.
These Autism and ADHD Resources for Parents are established, free UK sources, grouped around the support families most often need. Many neurodivergent children also have special educational needs that affect school, friendships, and family life. Support for neurodivergent young people can be hard to find in one place. I have chosen organisations that focus on practical, evidence-based support for children.
Support services, eligibility, and waiting times vary between areas. This is general information, not a replacement for advice from your child’s GP, school, or mental health professional.
How I Chose These Resources
I have spent more than 20 years as a clinical psychologist working with children and families, including in the NHS. I have also run an autism and ADHD parenting platform for around seven years, so I have seen how overwhelming the search for good support can feel.
At Everlief Child Psychology, my team and I offer assessments, follow-up support, and therapeutic support for autistic and ADHD children. As a specialist psychologist working in this field, the resources below are organisations I feel comfortable signposting families towards for expert advice. Autism and ADHD are both differences in how a child’s brain develops, so an assessment is the beginning of understanding your child, and the support afterwards is what helps day to day.
A trustworthy resource should usually do most of the following:
- Give clear information about who wrote it and where its claims come from.
- Use UK-relevant information about schools, benefits, healthcare, and legal rights.
- Recognise autism and ADHD as neurodevelopmental differences.
- Offer practical, respectful support for your child.
- Be open about limits, eligibility, and when professional help is needed.
Be cautious when you see guaranteed cures, alarming language designed to scare you, or expensive supplements presented as an answer without solid evidence. Parenting a child who is going through a lot can make you want certainty. But quick fixes often leave families with less money, more guilt, and no better understanding of what their child needs.
Good support helps you see the reason behind behaviour, then make small changes around your child.
If You Want to Start With My Own Free Guides
If you are at the beginning of this journey, you may prefer to start somewhere familiar. I have written a range of free articles to help you make sense of diagnosis, behaviour, sensory needs, school, and emotional regulation.
For a child who has recently been identified as autistic, begin with my guide to first steps after an autism diagnosis. If your child is showing difficult behaviour at home, you may also find my article about practical behaviour support helpful. Behaviour is communication, even when it looks messy, loud, or difficult, and the right behavioural support can change how everyday life feels.
You can also download my free printable Autism and Me activity book or my free printable ADHD and Me activity book. Both are strength-based and can help your child understand their own needs and identity.
If you want more structured, expert-led support for autism, the Embracing Autism online course for parents, which I created with a small team of fantastic colleagues, is a paid option. It is designed for parents of children who are newly diagnosed or waiting for an assessment. If your child has ADHD, or you think they might, Your Child’s ADHD Action Plan is my paid online tool for parents. You choose the struggle you most want help with, such as mornings, homework or sleep. It then gives you a plain-English explanation, a script for the moment and things to try next time.
General Autism and ADHD Resources for Parents
The most useful Autism and ADHD Resources for Parents give you reliable, respectful information. You do not need to read every page of every website. Pick one or two sources that fit your child’s current needs.
Local provision differs widely across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The NHS autism help and support page is a good place to start if you are not sure where to look first. You can also browse my wider collection of autism and ADHD parenting resources when you need practical ideas for everyday life.
For Autism: National Autistic Society and Ambitious about Autism
The National Autistic Society is often the first place I suggest for clear autism information. Its website covers diagnosis, communication, sensory differences, education, benefits, and local support options. It also has local branches run by volunteers across the UK. These can be a good way to find other parents and activities near you.
Ambitious about Autism focuses on autistic children and young people. It offers information for parents, youth participation, peer support, education work, and campaigning. Its family information about Ambitious about Autism is useful if you want a quick overview of its work.
For ADHD: ADHD Foundation, ADHD UK and ADDISS
The ADHD Foundation offers training, webinars, parent support groups, resources, and lived-experience content. It can help you understand how ADHD may affect attention, organisation, executive functioning, sleep, emotions, and school. Many parents say the peer support they find there, from others who understand, is just as valuable as the practical information.
ADHD UK is particularly useful for advocacy and campaigning around access to assessment and treatment. It has campaigned on Right to Choose, an NHS England scheme that lets you ask for an assessment from an approved provider, which can sometimes shorten the wait. It applies in England only and availability differs between areas, so ask your GP what is offered locally. ADDISS is an ADHD information and resource service with materials you can search when questions come up.
Use these sites to build understanding, but take individual medical questions to your GP or paediatrician.
PDA Society for Pathological Demand Avoidance
Some autistic children feel extreme anxiety about everyday demands and go to great lengths to avoid them. This is often described as a PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) profile, and general autism advice does not always cover it. The PDA Society offers guidance written specifically for these families, including strategies that focus on reducing demands and building trust.
Their resources can help you make sense of behaviour that looks defiant but is usually rooted in anxiety. They also give you language to use with schools and professionals who are less familiar with PDA.
Autistic Girls Network for girls and young women
Autism can present very differently in girls, and diagnosis often comes later because their traits can be missed or mistaken for something else. Autistic Girls Network focuses specifically on this. It has resources on masking, burnout, and how autism shows up in girls who appear to be coping socially.
This is a useful place to look if your daughter is struggling despite seeming to manage, or if you suspect her difficulties are being overlooked because she does not fit the more visible stereotype of autism.
WaitingWell for support while you wait for an assessment
Waiting lists for autism and ADHD assessments can run into years in many parts of the UK. That waiting time is rarely acknowledged as something families need help with. WaitingWell offers practical guidance, peer support and information to help families through the wait for an assessment.
It can be a useful place to turn if you feel stuck between recognising your child needs support and having anything formal in place yet.
When School Attendance Becomes the Struggle
Watching your child become increasingly distressed about school can be frightening. Perhaps mornings end in tears, tummy aches, shouting, or complete shutdown. Perhaps they can manage the school day but collapse once they get home.
School non-attendance linked to anxiety, sensory overload, autism, or ADHD calls for curiosity about what is making school feel impossible, unsafe, or overwhelmingly hard. This is different from applying for an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP), although the two can overlap. In England, an EHCP is a legal document. It sets out your child’s educational, health and social care needs and the extra support they must be given. You or the school can ask your local council to assess your child for one. The process should take up to 20 weeks, although many families wait longer.
Not Fine in School for families whose child cannot attend
Not Fine in School is a charity and parent community for families dealing with school anxiety, emotionally based school avoidance and non-attendance. It offers resources, shared experience, and advocacy for children whose anxiety, sensory overwhelm, or unmet needs have become barriers to attendance.
Its approach treats this as an anxiety response that needs understanding. That can be a huge relief after months of trying to get others to see what is going on for your child. Feeling constantly misunderstood at school can quietly wear down a child’s self esteem. Somewhere that starts by believing you and your child makes a big difference.
IPSEA and SOS!SEN for legal advice and appeals
If you are facing an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) refusal, a special educational needs disagreement, or a tribunal appeal, IPSEA and SOS!SEN provide free independent advice about education rights. Their focus is legal and procedural.
Keep notes of meetings, emails, attendance patterns, and the adjustments your child needs. Those details can be more helpful than a long account of how stressful things have been.
Support If You Live in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland
Much of the guidance available online is written with England’s system in mind, which can be frustrating if you live elsewhere in the UK. These organisations focus on the different education and support systems in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Enquire and Scottish Autism for families in Scotland
Enquire is Scotland’s national advice service for additional support needs. It can help you understand your child’s rights within the Scottish education system, which works differently from England’s EHCP process.
Scottish Autism offers information, family support, and services specifically for autistic people and their families in Scotland.
SNAP Cymru for families in Wales
SNAP Cymru provides independent advice and support to parents and carers of children with additional learning needs in Wales. This includes help understanding Individual Development Plans, which replaced the old statementing system.
Autism NI for families in Northern Ireland
Autism NI is Northern Ireland’s leading autism charity, offering information, support groups, and services for autistic children and their families across the region.
Smaller Charities Many Parents Have Not Heard Of
Some of the most helpful services are less familiar. They may be especially useful when your child’s needs do not fit neatly into one category.
The Sleep Charity for sleep support
The Sleep Charity is a dedicated UK charity focused on helping families improve children’s sleep, including autistic and ADHD children. It offers free guides and practical strategies covering bedtime routines, sensory needs, and family life.
If bedtime has become a nightly battle, for example, look for ideas that consider sensory needs, anxiety, routines, and regulation. A strategy that helps one child sleep may make another feel more wound up.
Special Needs Jungle for policy news and parent experience
Special Needs Jungle is a parent-led SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) website. It covers policy changes, rights, education issues, and family experience in accessible language.
This can be helpful when you need to understand why a council decision affects your family. It is also useful when you want to hear how other parents have approached a similar problem. Read it alongside formal guidance when you need to make an appeal or challenge a decision.
Resources for Autism for face-to-face family support
Resources for Autism offers direct, practical support for autistic children and their families, including play schemes, parent support groups, and short breaks. Their local services are based in London and the West Midlands, and they also offer virtual support. Check what is available for your family.
Money and Family Support Beyond Your Council
Financial pressure can add another layer of exhaustion. In England, every council publishes a Local Offer, a page setting out the support, services, and funding available to families of children with additional needs in that area. You can usually find it by searching your council’s name together with “local offer”. Charitable and independent organisations can also point you towards grants, benefits, and support that eases pressure on family life.
Turn2us for grants and benefits
Turn2us has a free benefits calculator and grants search tool. Even if you think you will not qualify, it can be a good idea to check. Many parents put this off because forms feel daunting, but a short search may give you a clearer idea of what support exists.
You Don’t Need Every Resource, Just a Few Good Ones
You do not need to work through every autism and ADHD website online. Start with a few established UK organisations that offer practical information, advocacy, community, or financial help.
Save the resources that fit your child’s needs right now. Regional availability will always vary, and there may still be times when you need professional or urgent support. But clear, compassionate information can make the next step feel much more manageable.
Practical Support You Can Use At Home
If you would like support from child psychologists that you can use at your own pace, Everlief Parent Club is our membership for parents of autistic and ADHD children in the UK. It has a library of on-demand webinars and Q&As on topics such as social communication and emotional regulation, plus courses on emotional outbursts, child anxiety and sleep, for £9.99 a month with no contract. You can see what is inside on the Everlief Parent Club page.
If your child has ADHD or you strongly suspect it, my ADHD Action Plan is a one-off £17 online tool for parents of children aged 5 to 17. You enter your child’s strengths and difficulties and choose a struggle such as mornings, homework or sleep. It then gives you a plain-English explanation, a script for the moment and things to try next time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Start with one trusted source of information, such as the National Autistic Society for autism or ADHD UK for ADHD, together with my free guides on first steps after an autism diagnosis and practical behaviour support. Add support for your own needs, such as help with school or sleep, when you are ready. You can take it one step at a time.
Look at who runs it, for example a registered charity, an NHS or government body, or a named clinician. Check that it says where its information comes from and when it was last updated. Trustworthy sites also tell you what they can and cannot help with.
In schools in England, support is based on your child’s needs, so it can start before a diagnosis. Several of the organisations on this page also welcome parents whose child is waiting for an assessment.
WaitingWell offers guidance and peer support for the wait. It also helps to keep short notes of what you see at home and at school, since specific examples are useful at assessment appointments. If you think your child may be autistic, my Embracing Autism course for parents is designed for families who are newly diagnosed or waiting for an assessment.
Dr Lucy Russell is a UK clinical psychologist and Clinical Director of Everlief Child Psychology. She qualified as a clinical psychologist from Oxford University in 2005 and worked in the National Health Service for many years before moving fully into her leadership and writing roles.
In 2019 Lucy launched They Are The Future, a support website for parents of school-aged children. Through TATF Lucy is passionate about giving practical, manageable strategies to parents and children who may otherwise struggle to find the support they need.
Lucy lives with her family, rescue cats and dog, and also fosters cats through a local animal welfare charity. She loves singing in a vocal harmony group and spending time in nature.
