In this interview-style session, Grandin takes us inside “visual thinking” and offers new approaches for educating, parenting, employing, and collaborating with special minds and visual thinkers.
Copyright : 25/01/2023This presentation will provide you with the information and resources you need to address attachment issues in autistic children. Upon completion you will be able to identify what is and is not an attachment issue, caregiver oriented connection struggles, and harmful outcomes of non-affirming misdiagnosed attachment approaches. This presentation will give you the confidence (and process) to better identify attachment needs and equip you with neurodiversity affirming approaches and techniques to attachment healing.
Objectives
Current diagnostic criteria for autism continue to be based on how autism looks in boys and men.
To make matters worse, it relies almost exclusively on observable behaviour while many other conditions, such as depression and anxiety disorders, have included the personal experience of “felt perspective” of the individual being evaluated.
These traditional approaches contribute to the under identification of autistic people, especially in those who camouflage well including girls and women and those considered “high-functioning.” To improve recognition of autism, a paradigm shift is needed.
In this recorded session, view Drs. Aspy and Grossman, as they guide you through strategies for acknowledging personal experiences of autistic individuals and minimizing the impact of masking during the assessment process. You’ll learn how to effectively:
This session incorporates core elements from their award-winning Ziggurat Model, a framework designed to meet underlying needs while capitalizing on strengths.
Objectives
As clinicians, we’re often eager to know the precise “strategies” or “techniques” we can use in autism intervention …
What’s more critical for you to know is how to interact with the child … it’s about the joy, the fun, the pretending, the emotions …. it’s about joyful play!
Join Jeffrey J. Guenzel, MA, LPC as you learn an evidence-based approach that uses relationships, movement, and play to promote social-emotional development for autistic children, DIRFloortime®. Attend and learn how to:
You’ll walk away with a framework that not only builds the essential foundations for developing in your autistic clients, but they’ll feel safe, loved, and understood in the process!
Objectives
Autistic individuals learn to mask their traits as a way of fitting in and navigating a world that is not designed for them. This social survival strategy – to stay emotionally and social safe from rejection, bullying, and ostracization – comes at a cost.
Masking is overwhelming. It is exhausting. And often leads to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.
As clinicians, we need to be aware of the potential for masking and be prepared to support our clients in identifying and understanding this phenomenon.
Join two autistic clinicians Sean Inderbitzen, LCSW, MINT and Lisa Morgan, M.Ed, CAS, for this fireside chat to learn how to identify when masking is present in autistic adults, in what context masking is helpful, and begin the challenging process of unmasking in two safe and neurodiversity-affirming ways!
Lisa guides you through a strengths-based approach to:
Sean unpacks an Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach to help autistic clients:
Objectives
Research shows that only 2 out of 44 clinicians feel competent working with autistic clients.
This unfortunately creates a huge gap in accessible treatment and services for this population. It also contributes to a negative stigma in the world of mental health that is not empowering or inclusive for autistic individuals.
Let’s bridge the gap in accessible services for autistic individuals who desire and deserve the same mental health access as everyone else and become a part of the solution!
Join Tosha Rollins, MA, LPC, ASDCS, to discover evidence-based strategies that create an inclusive therapeutic experience and environment as well as improve positive treatment outcomes for your autistic clients. In this session, you’ll learn how to effectively:
After this training, you’ll have a sense of confidence which ripples beyond the therapy room, into a positive mental health stigma for autistic individuals.
Objectives
Watching their child struggle. Worrying about their future.
And feeling the stigma and pressure of raising a child so many fail to understand can leave fathers of autistic children feeling isolated and unsupported.
Drawing on clinical, community, and lived experience as fathers of autistic children, Drs. Robert Naseef and Michael Hannon share the latest evidence about father involvement and their crucial impact on the child, the partner, and the family.
They’ll share the unique needs, aspirations, challenges, and successes of fathers of autistic children and how you can coordinate successful fathers’ group counselling sessions to instil hope, give them community, and much more.
Leave this session ready to provide the fathers with the support they need to be a resilient beacon of hope for their autistic children so they can thrive!
Objectives
If you’re working with transgender youth, the chances they are autistic are extremely high. One study reports that 32% of those youth have had their gender identity questioned due to being autistic and nearly 70% needed gender-related medical care.
Join Kade Sharp, an autistic LICSW, Registered Play Therapist, and Child Mental Health Specialist, as he teaches an easy and memorable 5-part framework for helping autistic trans youth as they transition! This framework will guide you through conversations about name changes, reducing dysphoria, gender affirming surgery, and more. You will no longer feel stuck or wonder what step to take next when exploring these topics with your autistic child and teen clients. Your clients will feel supported and affirmed by your new understanding of their neurotype!
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You don’t want to miss this dynamic long-awaited talk where six experts break down your very next step to move autism intervention away from behaviourism, towards a more neuro inclusive – client centred – model of care.
We’ll look at a social justice model, where societal – versus individual – barriers are explored and addressed. The juxtaposition of evidence-based interventions alongside a social justice model can seem daunting but is critical to build the self-advocacy and self-determination abilities of autistic clients.
In this discussion, we’ll highlight neuro inclusive approaches that you’ve learned over two days including Polyvagal Theory, strengths-based theories, Internal Family Systems Theory, DIRFloortime®, pharmacological interventions, and so much more. You’ll learn how to:
By the end of this panel discussion, you’ll have a better understanding of how to create a neuro inclusive hybrid model of care to ensure your autistic clients thrive in education, employment, community, self-advocacy, and much more!
Objectives
Join sought after occupational therapist, Varleisha Gibbs, PhD, OTD, OTR/L, ASDCS, FAOTA, as she walks you through the second brain and the enteric nervous system. By understanding this unique gut ecosystem, along with the intersection of epigenetics, you’ll leave with a better understanding of how the gut intersects with behaviour.
Dr. Gibbs demonstrates hands-on evidence-based approaches and methods to properly select interventions to help autistic children who struggle with self-regulation, emotional regulation, and sensory processing skills. Through current neurology research, new evidence on brain-gut connection along with video case scenarios, you’ll learn to:
Active learning strategies will include a video neuroanatomical review and case examples! Register Now!
Objectives
Autistic patients have a challenging time engaging in therapy, especially trauma therapies. This is in many ways due to the reliance of cognition. While pattern recognition and strong intellect are a great strength it does little to compensate for the difficulty with social engagement due to a dampened social engagement system.
Join autistic clinician Sean Inderbitzen, LCSW, Member of MINT, as he guides you through using Internal Family Systems and Polyvagal Theory lenses to assess cognitive suppression of emotional and somatic experiences of autistic clients. Building on this awareness, you’ll explore ways to increase somatic and energetic awareness during therapy sessions with your autistic clients.
Objectives
Neurodivergent children (autistic, ADHD, learning differences, sensory differences) represent a unique and large part of the population of children that participate in therapy, yet their needs are often misunderstood and neglected, not reaching their needed therapy goals.
Dr. Robert Jason Grant, creator of AutPlay Therapy, will share his 20+ years of experience in the field to explain the concepts of neurodiversity, ableism, neurodivergence, and how to be neurodiversity affirming. Many therapists often unintentionally implement interventions and techniques which can be harmful for neurodivergent children. Dr. Grant will share how to provide affirming approaches which give the child a voice, value the self of the child, empower the child, use play preferences as the agent of change, and address therapy needs and goals.
Your ability to recognize affirming vs. harmful interventions highlights the difference between effective vs. problematic play therapy work with neurodivergent children. This recorded session will provide you with the application of affirming play therapy processes to help neurodivergent clients grow and heal in their mental health goals while empowering the therapist to feel confident in their service to this most vulnerable population.
Objectives
Why do so many autistic kids end up on antipsychotic medications? Sure, they might be helpful, even lifesaving at times, but aren’t they also potentially very harmful? Can’t we try something different first?
Dr. Josh Feder, Editor in Chief at the Carlat Child Psychiatry Report has been calling out Big Pharma for three decades. Drawing on his approach from his latest book, Child Medication Fact Book for Psychiatric Practice, Second Edition, you’ll learn all the steps you might try before resorting to antipsychotic medications to reduce client struggles with irritability, anxiety, aggression, depression, ADHD, and sleep.
From non-pharmacological approaches to supplements, milder medications, and, if you need them, how to monitor for the side effects of antipsychotics and reduce some of the side effects, you’ll be ready to match the interventions with the needs and values of autistic clients and their families.
This is a session you don’t want to miss! Register Now!
Objectives
Neurodiverse couples and partners seeking therapy frequently report feeling disappointed and harmed by the care they received due to the lack of understanding about neurodiversity and its impact on relationships. This presentation will help you recognize, understand, and treat neurodiverse couples so that both partners better understand themselves, each other, and their relationship dynamics. You will leave this presentation with concrete tools and strategies you can use to help neurodiverse couples improve their communication and connection.
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Listening to feedback from autistics that have experienced services and supports that were intended to help yet may have done harm, is critical.
Join Drs. Kathleen Platzman and Karen Levine guide you through the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) toolkit—developed by autistic self-advocates—which provides the field feedback on what is ethical and what is not. Using the ASANs toolkit as a guide, we’ll look at:
This session is in part based on the ASAN toolkit entitled, "For Whose Benefit: Evidence, Ethics, and Effectiveness of Autism Interventions".
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