The PDA Society

Who we are

PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance) is widely understood to be a profile of autism. One of the most well-known features of PDA is demand avoidance, which is where a person finds it hard to manage everyday tasks or demands, even those they want or need to do.

Without understanding and support, PDA can have a profound impact on people’s lives. Our mission is to make life easier by building awareness and understanding of PDA, and providing information, training, and personalised support to everyone to needs it.

The PDA Society was established in 1997 by parents of children with a PDA profile of autism, and became a registered charity in January 2016. We provide information, support and training about PDA for individuals, families and professionals - directly supporting around 3000 people each year. We aim to increase acceptance and understanding of a PDA profile, and to improve outcomes for individuals and families by focusing everyone involved on what helps. The PDA Society is led and run by a small virtual team based across the UK, the majority of whom have a direct connection with PDA.

Our culture and values

Our values:

We understand

Our team is made up of neurodivergent people and parents, carers and family members of PDAers. Our personal experience means we know first-hand how challenging life can be.

We listen

We are committed to listening to PDAers, people who experience demand avoidance, and everyone in their lives. We work hard to understand what matters most to people and to ask the right questions.

We work together

We believe everyone has a role to play in making life easier. We bring professionals and researchers together with neurodivergent people and their families to share learning and make sure everyone’s voice is heard.

We are human

We care deeply about making a difference, and we bring compassion, connection and honesty to everything we do. When we do get it wrong, we own up, learn, and focus on what we can do better.

We are focused

As a small charity, we have to make tough decisions about how we use our limited resources to create the greatest impact. We’re transparent about our decisions, balancing individual needs with helping as many people as we can, as fast as we can. 

All our employees work from home in a very flexible and supportive environment. 

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) is at the heart of everything we do at the PDA Society. We exist to support all PDA individuals and everyone in their lives to thrive. We know that discrimination, inequality and exclusion is the lived experience of many PDAers. We don’t believe this is right.

If we want to be a force for good in tackling inequality, we know we must start in our own organisation. If we can cultivate a culture here where we; value each person as an individual; treat everyone with dignity and respect, recognising all parts of their identity and people feel safe to be themselves here then that will actively make us better as we strive for fairness in wider society.

We aim for our team to be truly representative of the diverse countries we serve on every measure and we will actively seek to provide an environment in which everyone is supported to thrive. We want all team members and those who work with us to feel respected and be able to give their best.

We will respect the diversity of all team members and treat them fairly and equally. The PDA Society will not tolerate any form of discrimination including age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

We have a detailed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policy that can be found on our website here: https://www.pdasociety.org.uk/our-policies/edi-policy/