THE organisers of a workshop for parents and families of children with autism want to raise awareness about the support they can offer.
The informal workshop deals primarily with parents of primary school children with Autism Spectrum Disorder as well as parents with children either moving into or are in secondary school.
Carole Williams, one of the unit managers and co-founders of the workshop, said: ‘We are trying to get the advice out there and raise awareness as we only have a small number of people who attend the workshops at the moment.
She said they were keen to bring more people into the workshops.
The workshops are held in the Professional Development Centre in Santon, several times during the year. They are held from 1pm to 3pm ‘so parents will be able to pick their children up from school’.
The next workshop takes place on Friday, May 24, and another workshop will follow in September, at a date to be confirmed
Carole explained what the workshops involve: ‘We talk with the parents and look at what difficulties they have with their children and do some sentence and word activities in order to help the parents understand the difficulties their children have in processing language, certain words and sentences.
She said: ‘We have had good results with the parents we have worked with and have had excellent feedback from them.’
Carole and her fellow unit manager Sarah Maddrell were inspired to expand their workshop to teach the parents of autistic children last year after having spent some time conducting workshops with professionals such as teachers and student aids on how to properly interact with autistic children.
‘We noticed there was gap and that it would be beneficial,’ Carole said.
The term spectrum is used because the symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) can vary from person to person and range from mild to severe.
To sign up, call Gail at the Professional Development Centre on 693836.