The Government has promised to reform the Mental Health Act; we feel they have failed to do so. Meanwhile, autistic people have been forcibly detained and may spend years in unnecessary restraints, over medicated and isolated. We want the Government to release them into residential homes.

We believe that in Britain, we pride ourselves on our values and our freedom. Yet we feel we do not see freedom for the disabled and mentally ill. We believe autistic people are not mentally ill and that the Mental Health Act should never have applied to autistic people in the first place. We believe support for autism has been badly underfunded and mischaracterised. We believe locking them away doesn’t change that they are there, and that they need real homes and support.