September 23 & 24, 2010 Winnipeg, MB
Learn practical skills that can be immediately implemented into existing curriculum and training programs, at home or in school!
Delta Winnipeg Hotel
350 St. Mary Ave, Winnipeg, MB
Deadline for Early Bird Registrations September 13, 2010
Who Should Attend?
•Educators
•Parents
•Speech/Language Pathologists
•Consultants
•Occupational Therapists
•Others who live or work with children who have Autism Spectrum Disorder or other Developmental Disabilities. Learn practical skills that can be immediately implemented into existing curriculum and training programs, at home or in school!
Conference Description:
Thursday, September 23
Catherine Faherty
A Practical Approach to Improve Communication Between Individuals with ASD or Asperger’s and their Neurotypical Communication Partners: Contract for Communication
Target Audience: Family members and professionals working or living with verbal individuals with ASD of all ages; and verbal adults with high functioning ASD or Asperger’s. This day is for those who desire mutual understanding, and are willing to learn to use new strategies to achieve that goal.
Catherine asks us to think of ourselves as “communication partners.” Each of us have people with whom we communicate, and we have unspoken assumptions about how, why, and when we communicate. She promotes a subtle but essential fact that the autistic style of communicating is different from –not inferior nor superior to the widespread, more familiar communication style that most family members, friends, teachers, therapists, co-workers, and other neurotypical (NT) communicators expect. Catherine proposes that both members of the relationship – the one with ASD, and his or her NT communication partner – make new agreements about HOW each person will communicate. These new agreements require knowledge about what is different about each communication style, and modification in each person’s natural way of communicating. She proposes the Contract for Communication as a way to help make this happen.
After today’s presentation, the neurotypical participants (family members, teachers, etc.) will be able to:
1.Become aware of their unspoken expectations about communication.
2.Be a better listener and clearer communicator with their family member/student/client with ASD.
3.Use visual methods of providing information for their family member/student/client with ASD.
4.Create and use specific and practical methods to help their child, student, spouse, or client with ASD express themselves effectively and authentically, including using Communication Forms.
5.List five “new agreements” that could improve their communication with their students, family member, client, co-worker, etc. with ASD.
After today’s presentation, the adult participants with ASD will be able to:
1.Choose, from a list of options, a preferred method of communicating, in any given situation.
2.Be introduced to, and/or become more familiar with, and/or skilled at self-advocacy.
3.Be introduced to, and/or become more familiar with the experience and expression of gratitude.
4.Have greater understanding/rationale for authentic self-expression.
5.List five “new agreements” that could improve their communication with their neurotypical family members, teachers, friends, therapists, co-workers, etc.
Catherine Faherty works with children and adults on the autism spectrum through the well-renowned TEACCH program in North Carolina. She is also a parent consultant and child therapist, consults to school programs, trains teachers and other professionals locally, nationally, and internationally, and runs social groups for children and adults with autism. She has written manuals used in TEACCH trainings, developed training models, and is the author of these 3 books - Understanding Death and Illness and What They Teach Us About Life, Asperger's...What Does It Mean to Me? and Contract for Communication, (to be published in the spring of 2010 by Future Horizons).
Friday, September 24
John Clements
Thoughts, Feelings and Behaviour: Empathy and Analysis in Working Through the Behavioural and Emotional Difficulties of Children with ASD
The course will argue for identifying our concerns in terms of thoughts, feelings and behavior rather than just behavior on its own. From this starting point the contributors to these challenges will be identified – those to do with autism, those to do with the environment and those to do with the interaction between the two. There will be consideration of three important but often obscured drivers of behavior:
1.Lack of social engagement
2.Lack of personal well being
3.Person-Environment fit
Approaches to assessment will be considered and an assessment aide provided.
From this base approaches to intervention will be examined. These will be considered first in terms of some of the common flashpoints such as requests and denials. Practical interventions for these situations will be presented and their use illustrated by case studies. The intervention implication of the ‘obscured drivers’ will then be detailed.
It is intended that as a result of the day’s work participants will:
1.Gain greater understanding of the drivers behind the behavioral difficulties that give rise to concern, particularly a wide range of antecedent conditions
2.Have an enhanced ability to assess these difficulties
3.Take away specific intervention ideas for the people with ASD that they support, in whatever capacity
John Clements is a British Clinical Psychologist, specializing for over 35 years in the field of developmental disabilities in general and autism in particular. After holding senior posts in the UK health and university systems, he established with Ewa Zarkowska the UK’s first independent psychological consultancy dedicated to people with developmental disabilities. In 1996 John emigrated to the USA and worked for the next 10 years as a behavior consultant in the great state of California, returning to the UK in 2006. John is the author of 7 books, (one entitled Assessing Behaviours Regarded as Problematic for People with Developmental Disabilities) and over 100 other publications. He retains a persistent delusion that he is a member of the Rolling Stones (not really!!)
Contact Autism Awareness Centre Inc. for more information on the Autism Awareness Centre, to register for upcoming conferences or to receive our Quarterly Newsletter, please contact us at:
Ph: 780-474-8355 or Toll Free: 1-866-724-2224
Email: vharris@shaw.ca
For Books and Resources or To Display a Product or Service at an AACI Event, please contact:
Maureen Bennie:
Phone: 403-640-2710
maureen.aaci@shaw.ca
For more information, registration fees, schedules or to sign up for the conference, please go to the Autism Awareness Centre site.
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