About this site

Common Ground exists because the information parents need after an autism diagnosis is scattered across fifty state bureaucracies, a dozen advocacy organisations that disagree with each other, and a marketplace that will happily sell you a cure.

This is a draft. State agency names, phone numbers and links have not all been verified, and most pages are currently available in full only in English and Spanish. Treat everything here as a starting point to confirm, not a final answer.

What this site is

A free, plain-language guide for parents and guardians of autistic children in the United States. It covers what autism is, what the research does and does not show, what helps day to day, and how to reach the services your state is obliged to provide.

It is written for the moment when someone first says the word "autism" about your child and you do not know what to do on Monday morning.

What this site is not

  • Not medical advice. Nothing here diagnoses, treats or replaces a conversation with your child's doctor.
  • Not legal advice. Special education and disability law is federal, state and local all at once. For a dispute, contact your state's Parent Training and Information Center or Protection & Advocacy agency.
  • Not a directory of providers. We do not recommend individual clinics, therapists or ABA agencies, and we do not accept payment for placement.
  • Not a cure site. We do not host or link to recovery claims, and we say plainly which popular treatments are unproven or dangerous.

How the content is written

  1. Sourced from primary material

    Federal law, CDC surveillance data, published systematic reviews and state agency documentation, rather than secondary summaries.

  2. Balanced where the field is divided

    On contested subjects — ABA most of all — we present the clinical case and the autistic community's objections side by side, and let you decide with your own child in front of you.

  3. Reviewed by autistic adults

    Autistic adults were autistic children, and their read on what helps and what harms is treated as evidence, not decoration.

  4. Dated

    Every page carries a last-reviewed date. Health information without a date should be discounted, including ours.

  5. Corrected in public

    If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say what changed.

Who runs it and how it is funded

Fill this in before launch. Name the people or organisation behind the site, their relationship to autism, any professional credentials, the funding source, and any conflicts of interest. Families deciding whether to trust a health site look for exactly this, and its absence is the single fastest way to lose them.

Who we are

[Name, role, and connection to the autism community.]

Who funds this

[Self-funded, donations, grant, or organisational backing. State it plainly.]

Advertising

None. No sponsored placements, no affiliate links, no paid listings of providers.

Conflicts of interest

[Disclose any financial relationship with a therapy provider, insurer, school or product.]

Languages

The interface, the crisis information and the full state-by-state checklists are available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, Haitian Creole, Russian and Arabic. Longer articles are currently translated into Spanish only; other languages fall back to English with a notice.

Translations need native-speaker review before this site is relied on. If you can help with a language, please get in touch.

Accessibility

This site aims to meet WCAG 2.1 AA. It works with keyboard navigation and screen readers, respects reduced-motion settings, supports light and dark themes, and has a larger-text control in the header. There is no auto-playing media and no timed content.

If any part of it is difficult to use with your assistive technology, that is a defect we want to hear about. Tell us on the contact page and we will treat it as a priority fix.

Reuse

[Choose a licence before launch. Creative Commons BY-SA or BY-NC is common for community health resources and lets parent groups translate and reprint your material without asking. State it here and in the footer.]