A STOCKSFIELD mother and daughter are harnessing their own experiences to produce an e-learning course about the reality of living with autism.

But first mum Ann and daughter Jenna, who is on the autism spectrum herself, have to raise the £3,000 needed.

They have already raised almost £900 of the £2,000 goal they originally set on their JustGiving page, but have ‘refreshed’ that figure after discussions with the production company that will make the training package .

“To produce it to the quality we want it will be £3,000,” said Ann, “so I’ll probably be putting in a significant part of that myself, I feel so passionate about what we’re doing.”

The e-learning package will be aimed at health care and teaching professionals, people key to supporting and understanding autistic children and adults.

A series of real-life scenarios will feature in the video and all of the actors involved will have autism.

Ann said: “We want to promote greater understanding and knowledge about this hidden disability and to do that, we need to access as wide an audience as possible.

“We aim to change the lives of people on the spectrum positively by increasing awareness of how difficult it is to lead a ‘normal’ life with Autistic Spectrum Disorder.”

What little existing training material they had seen was of poor quality and did not come with the insight that Jenna, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s at the age of 17, and her mother could give.

Indeed, such has been the success of the duo’s joint presentations, the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys Foundation NHS Trust invited them to join their autism strategy team, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists invited them to give a presentation at its annual conference at the Sage Gateshead.