Our Story

Thriving Autistic CLG was founded by Tara O’Donnell-Killen (SEO and Clinical Lead) in 2020 to address a gap that many recently identified Autistic adults may know well: the moments of realising you are actually Autistic, or just discovering that you may be Autistic after years of masking and unmet needs. We exist because that gap shouldn’t be a dead end; it should be the beginning of understanding, community, and self-discovery.

From that founding intention, Thriving Autistic has grown into something wider than we initially imagined. The Discovery Programme emerged as a way to offer structured, affirming learning for Autistic adults navigating their post-identification landscape. Alongside it, we have built the Neurodivergent Practitioners Directory — a searchable directory connecting neurodivergent people with Autistic-led and neuro-affirming practitioners and services worldwide.

Our open access resources include animations that bring key neurodivergent concepts to life in accessible ways, community events, and practical tools such as our Healthcare Passport and Workplace Accommodations Guidance — resources designed to support Autistic people in advocating for themselves. We host monthly community meetups where Autistic people can connect, share, and simply be together.

We also offer professional training for practitioners and organisations who want to work in genuinely neuro-affirming ways. Each of these grew not from a strategic plan, but from listening to what Autistic people said they needed, and to what the community kept telling us was missing.

Thriving Autistic recognises and affirms both formal identification and self-identification as valid. Access to formal diagnosis remains deeply unequal, shaped by geography, finances, race, gender, age, and the systemic biases embedded in diagnostic processes themselves. Many Autistic people wait years for recognition, and many never receive a formal diagnosis at all, not because they are not Autistic, but because the systems designed to identify them were not designed with them in mind.

Self-identification, grounded in genuine self-knowledge and community understanding, is a meaningful and legitimate way of knowing who you are. Everything we offer is open to anyone who recognises themselves in the neurodivergent experience, no clinical letter required, no gatekeeping, no hierarchy of whose identity counts.

At the heart of everything we do is a clear set of values rooted in the neurodiversity paradigm.

Thriving Autistic is neuro-affirming and neurodivergent-led — not in name only, but in practice, in governance, and in the knowledge we centre.

We are committed to open access because understanding your own neurodivergence should never be gated behind cost, geography, or professional referral.

We are committed to community autonomy — supporting Autistic people and communities to build their own knowledge and understanding on their own terms.

Read our full values statement.