CareTrade was founded in 2008 by Katharine Doré OBE and Karen Edwards both parents of teenage autistic sons.

Katharine and Karen met when their sons were pre-school age and on their first meeting in January 1997 they decided to start a school for children with profound autism. After getting a group of like minded parents together, they founded the TreeHouse Trust, now a National Charity for Autism Education. Today, TreeHouse has over seventy children with autism in fulltime education in their ‘state of the art’ school based in North London.

Government now acknowledges the extraordinary difficulties faced by school leavers and adults with autism but what has not been so clear is any grass roots action plan to change the status quo.

CareTrade has been founded as a registered charity to change the lives of school leavers and adults with autism by creating innovative services, meaningful training and apprenticeship schemes and supported employment opportunities.

CareTrade will also work to make society more aware of the needs of adults with autism.

CareTrade passionately believes that all young people with autism should have the opportunity to be part of their community, to have the support they need to access it and the opportunity to contribute to it. We plan to lead the way forward by creating a series of pilot programmes that can then be replicated elsewhere.