8th International Autism Conference 2014: Communication - The Key to Success

Pro­fes­sor Tem­ple Grandin

Tem­ple Grandin is inar­guably the most accom­plished and well known adult with Autism in the world. She hasn’t let Autism pre­vent her from liv­ing life to the full and has helped to rede­fine the per­cep­tion of what is pos­si­ble for peo­ple with Autism. Tem­ple has been fea­tured in major tele­vi­sion pro­grammes and national pub­li­ca­tions and is a promi­nent author and speaker on the sub­ject of Autism. She presently works as an Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor at Col­orado State Uni­ver­sity. Her lat­est book is enti­tled ‘The Autis­tic Brain – think­ing across the spectrum’.

Saskia Baron – Sib­ling and TV Pro­ducer, ‘The Autism Puzzle’

Saskia Baron is a doc­u­men­tary maker and jour­nal­ist. She is also the younger sis­ter of Tim­o­thy, an Autis­tic man with learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, now in his 50s. Her father Michael Baron was one of the found­ing par­ents of the National Autis­tic Soci­ety in 1962 and con­tin­ues to cam­paign for the rights and improved sup­port of adults with Autism. Saskia’s films include ‘The Autism Puz­zle’, made for the BBC in 2003; she is work­ing (slowly) on other Autism-​related projects.

Dr. Peter Ver­meulen – Lec­turer and Con­sul­tant, Autisme Cen­traal, Ghent, Belgium

Peter Ver­meulen, PhD has a Mas­ter in Psy­chol­ogy and Ped­a­gog­i­cal Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­sity of Leu­ven, Bel­gium (1985) and PhD in Social Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­sity of Lei­den, The Nether­lands (2002).

From 1987 until 1998 he worked for the Flem­ish Autism Asso­ci­a­tion, first as home trainer for fam­i­lies with a child with Autism, later as direc­tor of the home train­ing cen­tre and finally as trainer/​lecturer. Since 1998 he has been work­ing as Autism consultant/​lecturer at Autisme Cen­traal. He is co-​director of the Cen­tre for Con­crete Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, a Euro­pean train­ing and edu­ca­tion cen­tre for Autism spec­trum disorders.

Peter is edi­tor of ‘Autisme Cen­traal’, bi-​monthly mag­a­zine of the Autisme Cen­traal and a mem­ber of the edi­to­r­ial board of the Belgian-​Dutch Jour­nal of Spe­cial Edu­ca­tion, Child Psy­chi­a­try and Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­ogy. Sev­eral arti­cles on Autism and more than 15 books have been pub­lished – the lat­est of which are enti­tled ‘I am Spe­cial’ and ‘Autism as Con­text Blindness’.

Call for Papers

You are invited to sub­mit abstracts for oral and/​or poster pre­sen­ta­tions focussing on any inno­va­tions, devel­op­ments or research in the area of work­ing with young peo­ple with autism, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The abstract should not be more than 300 words in length (papers describ­ing work in progress are eligible).

A panel of asses­sors will judge sub­mit­ted sum­maries on sound­ness of approach, clar­ity of descrip­tion, and acces­si­bil­ity, impor­tance and rel­e­vance of con­tent for a national and inter­na­tional audi­ence. If a paper is accepted, pre­sent­ing authors must reg­is­ter for the meet­ing as a del­e­gate. Oral pre­sen­ta­tions will be allo­cated 25 min­utes plus 5 min­utes for questions.

Audience

The con­fer­ence would be of inter­est to:

• Teach­ers, Sup­port Assistants
• LEA staff
• Allied health professionals
• Speech and lan­guage therapists
• Edu­ca­tional psychologists
• Parents/​carers or oth­ers who are meet­ing the needs of those with Autism
• Aca­d­e­mics
• Med­ical practitioners