The Story of The Thomas Centre

This is the story of how we came to develop The Thomas Centre- the autism friendly holiday specialists in the UK providing outstanding facilities for families with autistic children.

Thomas is our second child and progressed marvellously until around 15 months when he suddenly regressed beyond all recognition. At that point our lives changed.

With a range of diagnosis including epilepsy, autism, LKS, chronic bowel disorder (to name but a few) we decided like so
many other parents before us, that we had to do all in our power to maximise Thomas’s ability and well being.

We also came to realise that we were still people in our own right and that we wanted to continue to enjoy a few of the good things in life. Good things like holidays in first class facilities, in an environment that was non judgemental and where we could relax and re-charge our own batteries for all the work and all the battles ahead.

Slowly we came to realise that all our friends, our new friends with children with special needs, felt exactly the same as we did. We wanted to enjoy some of the normal things in life that were eluding us, including first class holiday facilities for our whole family.

So when we moved to Lincolnshire, we bought a very redundant small farm with some very derelict and dilapidated barns.
Six years later in 2006, we took the big leap and we started to build The Thomas Centre. Tom's mum, Jan took on a whole new role, managing our
new business and now entering our fourth year we are proud to have received the responses from the many visitors and organisations that have enjoyed what we set out to do... to provide a five star holiday facility in a
safe, secure and non-judgmental environment.