Autism Association of WA 2020 Annual Report

Support for Parents and Families

We offer a range of support services for parents, carers and families of children and adults with Autism to assist them with everyday needs.

remain popular and beneficial in building local community connections and development of new friendships.

Our parent supports and services include consultancy services, practical assistance to understand Autism and diagnosis, a wide range of information services including workshops and seminars, and parent support groups. Training Our training sessions provide information, practical strategies, and resources to support parents, carers, and families. A comprehensive calendar of events was launched for the year with a total of 27 workshops and seminar, including 10 delivered as webinars and online training for families in regional and remote areas. To ensure that families had the support and training they needed to transition to the NDIS, the Autism Advisor team ran Getting to Know the NDIS workshops. This included understanding the new funding model, the eligibility criteria, and preparation for the NDIS planning meeting. Throughout the year, 40 Early Days parent training sessions were facilitated, enabling over 250 families to attend the workshops to upskill on behaviour support and developing independence skills. Due to the large amount of interest, 1 workshop was delivered in Japanese and other workshop content was delivered one-on-one to support parents’ individual needs. Parent Support Groups MyTime Our Parent MyTime Coffee groups provide parents and carers with some much-needed time to themselves. These groups

These sessions are run across 6 locations and each group is run by a parent of a child with Autism. After its launch last year, we have continued to run a dad’s specific group with funding support from Ngala.

Dads Group

Our dads group started with just 2 dads and has grown significantly over the past year to support over 150 fathers to become the best dad they can be! The first day of MyTime was the hardest yet most influential day of my life to date. It showed me that it was ok to be feeling as I did; I needn’t be embarrassed. Other fathers were going through the exact same thing and had been doing so for a lot longer than I. They were still able to function as adults and parents. Very, very good parents. More importantly I was exposed to a level of family cohesion that a few months prior I had convinced myself was not possible. A change that to date has increased beyond recognition” - Father of Luke In the last year, the Dads MyTime sessions have extended to include events as part of the Dads Autism Connect group with support from Telethon. In partnership with The Fathering Project and Verge Counselling we have been able to host several nights for dads and father figures of children with Autism as well as our Dads Dinner and Pizza Planning focus groups to assist us in growing this work further in the coming year.

We provide resources, as well as

facilitating chat- groups and other supported parent networks.

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