‘tips for autism’

Published 02 October 2008, Posted in National

‘tips for autism’ will again be available throughout New Zealand in 2009.

‘tips’ is a course where up to six teams of people supporting a child with autism spend four days developing interventions and plans to support their particular child.  This year (2008) there have been 13 courses to the teams around 80 children with ASD (about 500 people).

The course is free to participants and is available for teams who support students aged between 5 and 12 years. 

‘tips’ is funded by the Ministry of Education and some teacher release funding is also available.

There are opportunities for Ministry of Education, Special Education, RTLB and SLS staff to apply to become ‘tips’ facilitators. This involves each facilitator leading about 2-3 courses each year (10-12 days). They would usually be working within their region, but would occasionally need to assist in other regions.  Interested staff need the support of their employing Manager or Principal and funding is provided for release.

Facilitators receive training and ongoing support to keep up with the current evidence which is extremely valuable for sharing with colleagues and for their day-to-day practice. The Expression of Interest document for this is available at http://www.tipsforautism.org.nz. 

Preference will be given to candidates in the Northern and Southern regions in order to ensure a good regional spread.
There are also opportunities for parents of people with ASD (who are also teachers) to apply to become facilitators, so please feel free to pass the information on to people who might have an interest in this.

If you would like any further information, please contact the project leader Keryn Mells .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)