• Question: How important do you think it is that schools and universities are aware of the potential stress moving schools could cause individuals with Autism?

    Asked by anon-184157 to Lorna on 8 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Lorna Camus

      Lorna Camus answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Great question!
      I think it’s important that they be very aware of this. This transition period is difficult for everyone, and schools and universities should make sure they have support in place to help with this period.
      However, they should also know this period seems more difficult for autistic children/teenagers, and understand how characteristics specific to autistic people might make this period harder for them.
      Right now I don’t really have any suggestions, but I hope my research will give me some!

Comments

  • Photo: Nathan

    Nathan commented on :

    ‘Schools’ are an abstract concept. A school is not really a thing or aware of anything.

    All staff will be aware of this issue: They see it every single year and all the staff will have lived experience of going through it themselves (and possibly seen it firsthand at home with their own children). It’s hard to see how they could not be aware.

    As for the focus on autism, it’s quite likely at least some of the staff will have personal experience of being on the spectrum as well.

  • Photo: Tom

    Tom commented on :

    I was recently involved with a project in the Wirral which looked at these transitions from primary to secondary school, we gave a two types of intervention, one was educating peers about autism, the other as a small group collaborative games intervention. In the first we found that children with ASD post intervention felt more supported by peers and the peer attitudes towards disability were more positive, in the second intervention we found that students with ASD had more positive attiudes towards school and felt that they had stronger and more stable friendship group.

  • Photo: Abbie

    Abbie commented on :

    Sorry to be slow to this and it’s a great question. We have the Centre for Applied Autism Research (CAAR) here in the Dept of Psychology at the University of Bath that looks at managing this. You can find more out about the centre here – http://www.bath.ac.uk/research/centres/applied-autism-research. CAAR put on a week event for individuals with autism to come and live to see what it would be like to study at university and to help them manage this transition.