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Finding Your Community… Team (ART) receives are for information about autism and community services. Common requests are for connections to peer groups, recreation, and parent support groups, among others. Finding community matters. It creates a sense of purpose, provides a means to build social …
CST information for parents and caregivers… about your child’s development or behavior and are looking for strategies you can implement at home Desire a stronger local support system of trained community members and other families Are looking to build your confidence and develop parenting skills to better support your child and your own well-being What can you expect? The CST program consists of 12 sessions, including nine group sessions and three home visits. Small groups of caregivers get together with a trained group leader weekly or biweekly …
Relationship Development Intervention… its effectiveness and identify which individuals are most likely to benefit from it. I think that this lack of scientific support is the reason why you don’t hear more about RDI. Health and science journalists, for example, typically report on … inflate its benefits. So how do we control for bias in studies? For starters, it’s important to have a control group. The participants in this group receive a comparison treatment. They should be similar in age, behavior and other aspects to the “active treatment” …
Social Skills and Autism… by the idea of new experiences. Building up social skills with practice can help enhance participation in the community and support outcomes like happiness and friendships. We have compiled social skills tips and information from experts, teachers, … school, and in the community. A special education teacher, speech pathologist, or other clinician may lead a “social skills group” that combines direct, explicit instruction with opportunities to practice and generalize these skills in more natural …
CST information for professionals… with lack of access to quality care and interventions. In response to this need, the World Health Organization (WHO), with support from Autism Speaks, developed the Caregiver Skills Training (CST) for Families of Children with Developmental Delays … and teachers to deliver parent training with supervision from skilled trainers. Consisting of 12 sessions, including nine group training sessions and three home visits, the CST program aims to help parents and caregivers of children with autism …
Autism and ‘optimal outcomes’… to rethink what we mean by “optimal outcomes” For years, we’ve been using this term to describe a relatively small group of people with autism who, with therapy and support, experience such a marked decrease in autism symptoms that they no longer meet the criteria we use to diagnose the … re-defining “optimal outcome” as the best possible outcome based on each child’s personal characteristics and available supports . We find this as a much more suitable concept for developing autism services and setting goals for each child, …
Expert Q&A: Dr. Ryan Adams shares tips and resources to end bullying… in the UC Department of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, a member site of the Autism Speaks-supported Autism Care Network . His research focuses on adolescents, peer victimization, bullying and depressive symptoms.   … some examples of strategies you offer in the guides?  We know the most effective way to stop bullying is giving the larger group of bystanders the tools they need to recognize when it’s happening and get involved. A lot of times, people get away … with bullying by saying they were kidding, so we teach kids that doesn’t matter. Then, we give them different strategies to support the person being bullied. For example, the easiest thing to do if you witness bullying in school is not to laugh. …
Real world autism interventions… appropriate, with a qualified healthcare professional and/or behavioral therapist. For the last decade, Autism Speaks has supported the highly successful research of psychologist Connie Kasari, of the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. … Autism Speaks’ public health team to develop and deliver the World Health Organization Parent Skills Training program to support the development of children with autism in underserved communities worldwide, including the United States. In this … physically touching the device’s buttons to communicate. We have published several studies from our work with this first group of children. The successful results led to an Autism Center of Excellence grant that enabled us to enroll an …
Improving autism therapies by exploring the roots of social avoidance… brain activity while anticipating the social cue (smiling face) that they’d guessed correctly. And within the autism group, the children with severe symptoms showed greater brain activity when anticipating the non-social cue (upward arrow) than they did the smiling face cue. Support for the social-motivation hypothesis We see these findings as confirming and extending the social motivation …
Autism and taking turns… to process a lot of verbal instruction. In these situations, it’s important to create an environment that encourages and supports turn taking. (More about that below.) Explaining how and why to take turns can work well with many older children and those on the less-severely affected end of the autism spectrum. With these groups, we can also teach higher-level turn taking skills. (Also described below.) To put it another way, learning how to … with turns that involve rolling dice, spinning a wheel, picking up a card and so on. You may find it helps to use visual supports as a reminder or signal for when it’s someone’s turn. For example, consider giving each player a card that’s red on …