Founded in 2013 in Reading (UK), AutAngel is an autistic-led not-for-profit that organises workshops, outings, and social meetups for autistic adults.
Interview with Laura Williams, Director AutAngel
Tell us about AutAngel.
AutAngel aims to build autistic community, primarily through running peer-support groups and activity groups for autistic adults. Most of our members are autistic adults who do not have a learning disability or qualify for any government support with their autism.
We are currently a Community Interest Company, which is a form of not-for-profit organisation.
What are the core values and objectives of your organization?
AutAngel is peer-led, meaning that everyone who runs, works or volunteers for AutAngel is an autistic adult. We support the neurodiversity paradigm and aim to support our members to value their autistic strengths, whilst acknowledging and finding the right strategies and support for their challenges. Our main aim is to build autistic community by enabling autistic people to come together in the various ways that work for different individuals.
What was the motivation for founding your organisation?
AutAngel was founded in 2013 by Caroline Hearst, who aimed to build autistic community by connecting autistic people who could get together locally. Caroline retired in 2025 and AutAngel continues to build on this foundation and continue building autistic community.
What are your main activities and projects?
We run peer-support groups, activity groups, and post-identification workshops. These are open to adults who know they are autistic or believe that they may be, and we don’t require any formal diagnosis.
Our peer-support groups enable autistic adults to come together, build community, learn about their autism, understand themselves and move forward positively with a greater understanding of their personal strengths and challenges.
Our activity groups enable autistic adults to meet up and socialise in a way that often works better for us, as there is a plan for what we will be doing. We have recently started social meet-ups in the local community. We have arranged a meet up in a local café and went to see a light show in December 2025.
Our post-identification workshops are an opportunity for people who know or think they are autistic to learn more about autism, how it affects them specifically, understand their individual strengths and challenges, build their self-confidence in self-advocacy, and in general to move forward positively.
What specific achievements or impacts are you most proud of? Are there any “best practices” or examples of successes that you would like to share with other organisations?
We make sure that we give our members clear, written communication with an accessible layout. We have started sending shorter updates more frequently, and our members have told us that they find this easier to read, and attendance at our groups has increased as a result.
We have always involved our members in decisions about our groups, but recently we have found more ways for people to be involved. For example, our members requested a Dungeons and Dragons group, which we have set up. They also suggest ideas and help to plan activities. For example, they have helped to plan a Christmas craft stall and social meetups. Our members also help to plan discussion groups by telling us what topics they would like to talk about.
We have recently employed an autistic gardener to run our allotment group, who receives very positive feedback, and more of our members have joined the group as a result.
We receive increasingly positive feedback from our members about out peer support groups, activities, and other gatherings. For example, at our seasonal gathering in December, several members said they had enjoyed themselves and were surprised to feel that way in a larger group setting.
We have increased awareness about AutAngel and autism in the local community by holding talks, presentations, and stalls in libraries, the university, and with social care teams, and have connected with the mental health service and an ADHD group. This has improved knowledge about autism, and these organisations are able to signpost autistic people to AutAngel.
How does participation in EUCAP contribute to your mission?
AutAngel is run by autistic people, but we think it’s really important that we represent as many autistic people as possible. We want to build and maintain positive connections with the wider autistic community within the UK and internationally, so that we can be aware of new concepts, research and advocacy, and share this knowledge with our team and our members.
What difficulties or challenges does your organisation face?
Funding – it is increasingly difficult to successfully get charitable funding for our work. We aim to diversify our income stream, however this is challenging as a team of autistic adults, as we are not always able to do all the work we would like to.
Diversity, especially ethnic diversity – our membership does not reflect the wider community in Reading, and we are seeking support to ensure we are accessible and welcoming to as many autistic people as possible.
What are your main goals for the coming years? Are there new initiatives in development?
In the short term, we hope to secure ongoing funding for AutAngel to continue our work. In the medium term, we plan to expand our steering board and team of directors with new members.
We hope to increase our organisation’s diversity at all levels, and currently we would like to see more representation from young people, people of colour, and people with a variety of experiences.
In the longer term, we plan to change our organisational structure from Community Interest Company to Registered Charity. We feel that this setup will better reflect our organisation’s aims and make AutAngel more stable and sustainable for the future. As a charity, we may be eligible for new sources of funding, which will help us support more autistic adults in the future. We also hope to raise more earned income by offering autism training, which could enable us to provide supported, part time, paid work opportunities to autistic adults, who often find that mainstream workplaces don’t make the most of their strengths and expertise in autism.
Thank you!
AutAngel At a glance
Name: AutAngel
Country: UK (Reading)
Year established: 2013
Staff: Four paid part-time employees, three paid group facilitators, and six volunteers.
Target group: Autistic adults
Core values: Building autistic community through peer support
Communication: Weekly member emails, website, Facebook
Funding: Project-based, charitable-funding grants, plus donations and membership fees.
Previous EUCAP Member Interviews
AMASE (Scotland) Fergus Murray and Fiona Clarke
Autisme Ungdom (Denmark) Thea Enevoldsen
ACM (Malta) Jacob Callus
APVA (Portugal) Raquel Tavares Lebre
PAS (Netherlands) Robert van der Gun
Organiserade Autister (Sweden) Daniel Grahn, Johannes Sandqvist, and Johan Sveno
ASK (Croatia) Kosjenka Petek & Zrinka Sinkovic
suntAutist (Romania) Maria Ivănescu
A-Centrum (Slovakia) Viera Hincová
ARGH (Scotland) Kabie Brook
CEPAMA (Spain) Carmen Molina
CLE (France) Thibault Corneloup & Hélène Queyras
Autisme Digitaal (Netherlands) Frederik Boven Stichting
