PDA Action Day is a day to raise awareness, increase acceptance and take action about PDA.
We’ll be launching some new initiatives in the lead up to 15th May. Here are some ways you can get involved …
- If you’re not already, register as an associate member of the PDA Society. Associate members will be the first to receive copies of our new newsletter.
- You could plan a fundraising event on or close to PDA Action Day – this could be a coffee morning or a jumble sale or a sponsored activity or a raffle …
- Share PDA Society posts on social media and help spread the word, using the hashag #PDAday
- Adopt our panda ambassador as your social media profile pic and/or cover page
- Take the opportunity to share information about PDA with your friends, families and other people involved in supporting you/your child (medical professionals, teachers, social care workers, local authorities …). You might want to share one of the resources on the PDA Society website or our literature.
- PDA Action Day falls in the middle of the general election campaign, so we can all take the opportunity to help raise the need for improved services with all the candidates and campaigners who’ll be on our doorsteps. You might want to ask specific questions like “Will you make autism a priority because I have/I have a child with PDA?” or “Will you fight for more funding and training for CAMHS because I have/I have a child with PDA?” and share what your experiences of local services have been. Or you could support the National Autistic Society’s I’m One campaign and the Disabled Children’s Partnership survey and campaign for improved health and social care provision for disabled children, young people and their families.
- Take the opportunity to increase acceptance of PDA …if you see articles/posts about autism which don’t mention the different diagnostic profiles, you could maybe contact the writer/publisher and introduce them to PDA. You could say something like “Further to your recent article/post, I wanted to make you aware of Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). PDA is part of the autism spectrum, though the strategies and adjustments needed are very different. Please see: http://www.pdasociety.org.uk/what-is-PDA “. You could also let the PDA Society know about it so we can contact them too.