Welcome

Maternity Autism Research Group MARG

Welcome from MARG Chair Sara King.

Hello and welcome to the first blog article on MARG.

I’m delighted that we are launching the MARG website. Our intention is to signpost high-quality materials for health professionals and Autistic people to increase understanding, and awareness and improve the experiences of Autistic people as a direct result. If you haven’t already, please visit our mission statement page for more information about our aims.

MARG came about during the process of carrying out my PhD exploring this area. When presenting at conferences and talking about my research, and when recruiting maternity services staff participants, researchers and health professionals with an active interest in this area started to individually make contact to ask questions and tell me about their own research and work in this area. It seemed a logical next step to set up a meeting for us all to consider options to work together and support each other, and MARG was born as a direct result of that first meeting.

We are an Autistic-led team of people who have volunteered our time, knowledge and skills to develop MARG. We are multi-disciplinary and cross-institutional. What we have in common is a shared passion to explore, learn and share knowledge and expertise to make direct and practical changes in maternity care and early parenting for Autistic people – including those having babies, Autistic partners, and Autistic staff. It has been incredibly exciting for me to meet others with a common goal, and I’d like to thank the MARG team members for their hard work and support in getting us up and running.

As you can see from our Team area, some MARG members are studying or are researchers in this field, some have published articles and books, and others have developed resources. Some of us work as trainers and educators and share our knowledge in this way. Collectively we have a strong drive to really make a difference and will work together to build on the information we signpost and will continue to learn and update about improvements that can be made.

Our resources and research pages will develop and grow over time, there will be updates on our blog too, and we have been discussing plans for the future so please do come back and visit us regularly to find the latest information.

We hope you find this a useful resource, feel free to get in touch with any questions or feedback – we’d love to hear from you.

Sara King

Chair of Maternity Autism Research Group (MARG)