Our Story

Letter From The Founder

January 2014

It started with a call from my son’s nursery saying there was something wrong with Konstantin. He was lying on the floor staring at the lights and not responding to anything.

I had no idea then that my life would never be the same. Of course the first thing I did was ring his paediatrician. What followed was appointments with specialists, and a battery of tests and diagnoses starting off with the most common assumption – maybe the problem had to do with his hearing.

It was a few weeks later, after I went to see Dr Margaret O’Driscoll, that autism was first mentioned. I thought my heart had been ripped out. I put the phone down and burst into tears. Where had my son gone, my beautiful fun little boy? I couldn’t recognise him anymore. My son was slipping away and there was nothing I could do. I could shout his name and he would be oblivious. I was so frustrated. At my daughter’s school her teacher said there was another little boy on the spectrum whose mother was a neuro-psychiatrist, who believed in ABA, and my world began to change. Within a week of therapy, Konstantin was sitting at the table and looking at us.

He was engaging a gain. A year later, not every day but sometimes, he makes requests.Konstantin and his four year old sister, share a room and hugs, too. She gets involved in his therapy and he takes her hand and shows her things.

You’ll learn more about ABA on the rest of the site, but I’m one of the lucky ones because I can afford the £45,000.00 per year that it costs for this remarkable treatment. But it shouldn’t be a matter of luck or privilege, and that is why I have set up The Giving Tree Foundation – Turning Autism Around. I want other families to benefit and it saddens me that so many can’t, especially when 1 in 68 children are born somewhere on the spectrum.

My mission is to ensure that as many families as possible will be able to access this treatment, aimed at children between three and five, and change their lives.