26.04.2018

New guidance on helping children suffering from autism spectrum disorders (ASD) will be useful for parents and professionals working with special needs children.

April has been the month for promoting information about autism, so much so that the Open Hearts Foundation is bringing out a book entitled: “Children with autism spectrum disorders in kindergartens and schools: Proven successful programmes”. Its authors are “Open Hearts” Foundation experts, invited professors from the University of Mexico, children’s neurologist, Svyatoslav Dovbnya, and clinical psychologist, Tatiana Morozova.

The manual focuses on the latest programmes designed for children with ASD and will be useful for parents and professionals who work with these children. From this guidance, people will learn about techniques for teaching children with ASD, modern methods for assessing and developing communication and social skills, and approaches for evaluating behavioural intervention strategies using various visual support aids.

“It is impossible to learn new ways of teaching and treatment by simply reading a book or listening to lecturers without trying them out in practice. Our aim is not just to impart the latest knowledge of programmes for helping those with ASD but also to establish pilot areas where psychologists, teachers, speech therapists and tutors can see at first-hand how modern behavioural programmes work in practice, how the children change and the positive strides they can make. It is this combination of guidance material and practical intensive training methods that make the Open Heart Foundation’s approach unique” said Dovbnya.

The manual is due out in May with hard copies available to the charity’s beneficiaries free of charge. An electronic version can be accessed via the charity’s website.

The book has already been presented at a joint press conference organised by the Vykhod charity in the offices of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. For its part, Vykhod has developed an online lecture-based ASD course for universities, accompanied by a printed anthology which has been issued by the Praktika Publishing House.

Two elements are integrated within the course, i.e. an online encyclopaedia which contains all the ideas and terms that can be heard today when people talk about ASD and a replenishable archive of modern scientific publications with abstracts in Russian (“Autism Studies”).

Source: https://www.asi.org.ru/news/2018/04/26/autizm-posobie/