Autism Awareness Centre hosts conferences across Canada and the UK, while ensuring books, articles and resource supports are readily available to all communities keeping parents and professionals on the cutting edge of new information. Autism Awareness Centre is leading the way because we “believe in change”.
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Featuring Kari Dunn Buron
Highly rigid and restrictive routines are a part of the autism diagnosis. If we look at autism through the neurodiversity lens we might notice that repetitive routines are a learning strength for autistic individuals.
The Incredible 5-Point Scale was developed with this assumption in mind. The scale is a highly systemized method of teaching social and emotional information. What we have found over the recent 20 years is that focusing on rigidity and inflexibility as a learning strength, and placing value on that learning channel, can assist educators and parents in creating successful strategies.
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Featuring Carol Burmeister and Sheri Wilkins
Students with autism and related disabilities often struggle with executive function (EF) skills. The good news for parents and educators is that EF skills can be taught. Furthermore, students can be taught to select and use strategies for building EF skills independently, leading to greater self-determination and success in school and life after school. Teaching through a gradual release of responsibility, teachers can prepare students to use strategies effectively across environments.
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Featuring Kathleen Mo Taylor and Marci Laurel
Social Engagement & the Steps to Being Social is a unique, visual tool developed to guide assessment and intervention across severity levels and age groups for individuals with ASD. The model addresses the need to break pivotal social skills into smaller steps that can be easily measured and targeted for growth. Components of social engagement and specific steps of being social will be identified. Evidence-based practices will be linked to teaching specific social skills. Emphasis will be on practical application.
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Featuring Jennifer M. Schmidt and Megan R. Barrett
There are 27 Evidence Based Practices for students with autism (NCAEP, 2020) and many of these EBP’s are highly effective when teaching social skills to students on the spectrum. Through this webinar you will learn about the 7 EBP’s consistently used in the PEERspective Model. This model was created by Jennifer more than 15 years ago and many districts have adopted it with similar success. Learn about how to implement your own PEERspective Model and/or how to use EBP’s in your setting to successfully teach social skills to students with autism.
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Featuring Amy Gaffney
Strategies that provide structure and predictability help individuals on the spectrum better understand a given situation, which leads to greater success and independence. This webinar will discuss three structured strategies that can be used throughout a person’s day: structured language supports, visual schedules, and work systems. These strategies are often introduced at school but should also be extended into a child’s home and community, and continue to be utilized into adulthood. Participants will have the opportunity to make an action plan as they learn more ways to utilize structured strategies throughout the day.
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Featuring Sherry A. Moyer, MSW, LSW
This workshop gives audience members an opportunity to learn the critical role of assessing our circumstances, identifying our options and then taking action to improve the situation BEFORE it becomes a crisis. Using a side-by-side comparison of real-life examples for both children and adults, the presentation gives a practical approach to recognizing disruptive effects of negative or hostile attribution patterns on self-regulation and immediate steps that everyone can take to promote positive attribution and successful outcomes.
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Featuring Lauren H. Kerstein
With this presentation, participants will be given the opportunity to engage in a deeper exploration of sensory issues and the impact they have on our emotions, mental health system and self-regulation. The presentation will guide participants through developing a better understanding of sensory challenges and strategies that might effectively assist a child with increasing his/her ability to understand and manage sensory issues.
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Featuring Richard Mills
This webinar will discuss the SPELL Framework, initially developed by the UK’s National Autistic Society (NAS), and how it promotes a better understanding and response from people who are supporting and caring for autistic children and adults.
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Edited by Rebecca Silva, Ruth Prystash, René DeLoss and Carol Burmeister
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Conferences and workshops provided by the Autism Awareness Centre (AACI) are designed to provide all parents and professionals with up-to-date and relevant information, and resources and skills that can be immediately implemented into the care and training of those who have autism or other related disabilities.
We offer a comprehensive list of autism related resources, links, and tools for Canada, the United States, the UK, and beyond. Click a region to view an extensive listing of autism resources and organizations to help you navigate pervasive development disorders (PDD), and ASD.
Last post: December 1, 2021
The health and safety of our autism community and beyond is at the forefront for Autism Awareness Centre Inc. For the first time in our 18 years as a company, we have not been able to offer conferences or in person trainings since the pandemic began in mid-March of 2020.
As a result of the ongoing pandemic, Autism Awareness Centre Inc. (AACI) has been hard hit. Conferences, trainings and sales from our bookstore are what keep us going as we operate with no sponsorship, funding or grants of any kind. There are small things you can do to help us keep going and continue the global work that we do.
We are taking steps to offer new ways of learning. For example, we have launched a series of inexpensive E-books with more to come. We offer monthly webinars, both live and on demand, to support on-going development and education for families and professionals. Studio 3 Canada is offering Day 1 of our 3 day Low Arousal Approach training online.
If you need any resources, we have a wide selection of products in our bookstore. The proceeds from the bookstore go directly back into AACI operations. We are continuing to process orders quickly and efficiently. Please order from us if you need something.
When we can offer our conferences and trainings again, please support them by attending. We will continue to offer a wide variety of topic and world class speakers at our conferences across Canada.
Thank you for your kind words of support during this difficult time for all of us. I am still here writing, answering your e-mails, and posting important information on our Facebook page. If you need any help, I will continue to do my best to find answers for you. Stay safe and stay well in these uncertain times we are continuing to face.
Sincerely,
Maureen