Five full-time staff will be responsible for answering the telephone line (0800 71 40 40), open Monday to Friday from 9 am to 1 pm, and Tuesday from 6 pm to 8 pm.
Where to find a psychiatrist, a speech therapist, a diagnostic center for someone with autism? Often clueless, the approximately 700,000 affected families will have from April 2 a free service of advice and information, via a dedicated telephone line and an online directory.
"Help parents find solutions". Supported by an association founded by parents, and funded equally by public and private funds, "Autism Info Service" wants to "listen" to parents "desperate, because they do not know who to call" and guide them to services or professionals close to home, said the promoters of the project at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday. "We are not magicians, it is not us who will create places in crèches or school, but we want to help parents find solutions, or at least bits of solutions," explained Florent Chapel who co-chairs with comedian Samuel Le Bihan - each father of an autistic child - the association carrying the project.
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A desperate need for advice and support. According to an Occurrence survey conducted on behalf of the association with 2,203 people with autism or caregivers, 97% of those concerned said they needed advice and service, and 78% were faced with a situation where they could not find information relating to the accompaniment of their close autistic. In addition, 38% took more than a year to obtain the information to be referred to a support device. But "losing a year is a real loss of luck for a child," lamented Florent Chapel who wants the service to become a "small lighthouse in the night of parents".
In practice. Five full-time staff will be responsible for answering the telephone line (0800 71 40 40), open Monday to Friday from 9 am to 1 pm, and Tuesday from 6 pm to 8 pm, and will be able to forward more complex questions to a team of experts. The service will also be accessible by chat on the autismeinfoservice.fr website, which will include a directory of professionals and services. This last tool is part of the "autism strategy" announced a year ago by the government, which aims to "catch up" with France in this area.
With the listening platform and the website, it's about "breaking the isolation, stopping this permanent door-to-door families, this obstacle course to find local solutions", summarized the Secretary of State for People with Disabilities Sophie Cluzel. "Autism Info Service", with a budget of 1.2 million euros for the next two and a half years, is funded by the State, the Ile-de-France region and the three private foundations Bettencourt-Schueller , Michelin and Orange.