The National Autistic Society – helpline,courses..
https://www.autism.org.uk/get-involved/about-us/contact-us.aspx
The excellent National Autistic Society runs a dedicated helpline. The link above also brings you to their Site.
(Mike Stanton’s assistance in setting up this Trust was invaluable – thank you Mike).
For national campaigns and a wealth of information their Home Page https://www.autism.org.uk/ is great.It includes information on useful courses for professionals. Sue Peaple Trust aims to support much of this at local community level and will consider appropriate applications from local groups. Information for teachers and educators who may be new to this area of teaching, or want to develop, will find https://www.autism.org.uk/professionals/teachers.aspx a great help.
- For identification and strategies there is no ‘one size fits all’ . A good start could be https://www.autism.org.uk/professionals/teachers/recognising-autism.aspx . The Sue Peaple Trust treats the autism spectrum as a matter of individual persons rather than classification so any overall description should only be a starting point. Yet there are some important points in the above link.
- An example, just a few years ago, many Secondary schools failed to recognise the difficulty of ‘play time’ for some children on the spectrum. ‘Breaks’ were relatively unsupervised times for children to relax and ‘chill out’ weren’t they? Quite the opposite is often the case if you’re on the spectrum. The need for supervision and support at these times can be vitally important. Much can be overwhelming or difficult to cope with.