Donate CTA

All families in Washington State have the resources they need to support the well-being of loved ones with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Calm, confident competence.
Creative, cutting-edge advocacy.
Nimble, flexible and responsive service.

WAAA started in 2007 with only four members who had children with autism and wanted to fight for their right to autism health benefits. Three years and 800 members later, we successfully achieved health care coverage for all of them through Washington state insurance. We also had several other wins for individuals covered by private insurers.

Our efforts have helped more than 12,000 Washington residents secure autism coverage to pay for vital therapies that would otherwise cost a family $25,000 to $50,000 per year.

Today we provide Insurance, Family Resource and Education Navigation to an average of 3,000 member families a year, in every County in Washington. We continue to lobby for social change and improved public policies on behalf of children and adults with autism. We are a mighty but very small team of fierce advocates and need your help to continue to make the impact we are making statewide.

Washington Autism Alliance & Advocacy is a not-for-profit organization with a 14 person staff, 7 of them part-time. We provide a broad range of pro bono Insurance, Family Resource and education navigation and advocacy services to families of children with ASD/DD.

Roughly 90% of our work is paid for by Shayan's Fund, a legislative budget proviso combined with a grant both restricted to insurance navigation and insurance appeals. Our low overhead costs are covered by small private donations.

Law requires that we use Shayan's Fund only for health law advocacy and health-related supports. This leaves WAAA uncompensated for the many other vital services that our staff provides, often times on their own time. These include comprehensive and in-depth family case management, special education navigation and advocacy, technical support to providers and agencies on health, insurance and education policies to improve access to services for ASD/DD statewide and taking on systems reform to improve autism provider capacity to address pervasive waiting lists faced by low income children and families that can be up to 4 years. We seek to sustain these vital services through direct donor funding.