A FORMER Reading councillor who breathed new life into a charity helping families with autistic children has been awarded an MBE for her work.
Jane Stanford-Beale is the chief executive officer of Autism Berkshire, a role she has held for nearly a decade.
She joined as a volunteer in 2014, and the charity says she stepped up to lead it a year later – at a time when it was losing momentum and struggling to maintain its reputation.
Since then, the charity has been turned around, becoming one of the main providers of autism support in Berkshire, thanks to a stable foundation of trustees and volunteers.
The charity now delivers an outstanding quality of individualised support to people with autism, and is recommend to families by professionals.
As part of this, she seeks to recruit people who have had have experience of autism and offers flexible working hours that take their needs into account, even if this means giving up her spare time in evenings and weekends to support them with their events.
During the lockdown stages of the covid pandemic, Ms Stanford-Beale helped secure funding for activity bags to help autistic children with the isolation caused by the order to stay at home.
The charity also pioneered digital offerings so work could continue. This led to Autism Berkshire being awarded a National Census 2021 Purple Plaque for her contribution to the community during Covid-19.
Ms Stanford-Beale is also a non-executive director for Reading Buses, and this has helped the charity: Realising that local bus drivers frequently interacted with individuals with autism but had little understanding of the best way to help them, she embarked on a mission to upskill all Reading drivers by delivering training sessions.
And working with Thames Valley Police, Autism Berkshire pioneered the Berkshire Autism Alert card which can be shown to officers attending incidents, letting them know they are dealing with a vulnerable person.
Away from the charity, she served as a Conservative councillor in 2012, standing in Peppard Ward and serving as deputy group leader. She stepped down from that position in the May 2022 all-out local elections.
She was a software development project manager for Reuters, a governor and chairman of governors at New Bridge Nursery School in Caversham for 16 years and a non-executive director of Reading NHS Primary Care Trust.
