The everyday care of people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) places complex demands on the accompanying persons and institutions. The daily work is carried out in the area of conflict between the professional demands of individual support and dealing with possible challenging behaviour. The theoretical knowledge about autism and autism specific pedagogical concepts is the basis for professional action. However, the diversity of individual characteristics within the entire autistic spectrum makes implementation difficult. Experience has shown that it is necessary to constantly reflect on one's own pedagogical actions and to adapt them to the client and the situation. The continuing education course with its deliberately high practical relevance is intended to meet these requirements: The selection of topics is strongly oriented towards the requirements of everyday care. Understanding the behavior of people with ASD and the possible underlying functions, the development of assistance possibilities in all areas of life and also dealing with challenging behaviour are among the main topics. The special feature of this course is that in a learning group of 20 people, each participant works with one of his clients during the entire training period. This means that between the individual sessions, work assignments relating to the client are to be carried out in the participant's own practice, which are then reflected on and developed further on the basis of the participant's own video recordings. The implementation, reflection and further development of these practical parts are elementary components of the training. The learning group will consist of a mixed group of 20 participants from the participating partner institutions. The target audience are staff members who work with people wih ASS in their everyday professional life, be it in schools or in consulting activities with people with ASS. The group will include educators, teachers and therapists. All participants have at least a bachelor's degree. The composition of a multidisciplinary team is a conscious decision, as the project builds on the experience of the participants and aims to strengthen each participant in his work by providing new tools and allowing plenty of time for reflection and practical implementation in everyday professional life. At the end of the training the participants should: - have developed an understanding of autism and the resulting implications for assistance - Know the basic principles of the TEACCH approach and take them into account when implementing them in everyday teaching, - be able to develop various options for structuring and visualization in practice in a client-specific manner - Being able to identify strengths, interests and problem areas of their clients, - be able to create individual support planning for individual areas of life, - better understand their clients' behavioural problems in their conditional structure and derive possible intervention strategies, - Understand the basic ideas of ICF and be able to apply them in the field of autism. After successful completion of the project activities and an examination of the acquired knowledge, the participants receive a certificate (CAS-Certificate of Advanced Studies) of 15 ECTS credits. The cross-national implementation is a chance for all project partners to build up an Euregional Autism Network, which will continue to exist after the end of the project. The project partners each have important competencies within the team that contribute to: - a good functioning of the project: the AHS has valuable experience in organising additional training and is the guarantor for the certification of the additional training. In addition, the AHS is regularly involved in E+ projects and also participates in strategic partnerships in the field of research, thus providing an experienced guide for the other institutions; the CTSA, as a counselling centre, has a different - therapeutic - view of ASS than the special schools; the ZFP and MLKS can contribute very practical examples and show where the challenges in everyday school life lie and how pupils can be prepared for a future after their school careers, here too there are many stumbling blocks. As the ZFP, the CTSA and the MLKS are all special schools in different countries and with different focuses, they can also use the opportunity to transfer knowledge between the countries on the fringe of the project; - on the other hand, the participants can draw on the experience of the multidisciplinary group and have external partners on an equal footing even after the end of the project to share and support each other in challenges in the care of people with ASD. Network thinking is particularly important in specific subject areas, especially since East Belgium and Luxembourg are dependent on external partners due to their small size.
On the one hand, the participants who took part in the project activities (8 training modules) should receive the necessary competences for their everyday professional life. On the other hand, the strategic partnership should serve to bring important actors in the Euregio (two schools for special needs education, the Autonome Hochschule in Ostbelgien as a school for teachers and the CTSA as a Luxembourg centre of excellence in the field of ASD) closer together and to work together in a Euregional Autism Network, to exchange expertise and to find joint solutions for challenges in dealing with pupils with ASD. The final conference with keynote speeches again focused on the needs of people with ASD.
The student profiles in schools for special needs have changed. We are noticing an increase in the number of students with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis, sometimes paired with a dual diagnosis, especially in these schools, but also in the mainstream schools. Therefore, the services are also experiencing an increase in requests for specialized consultations and training in this area. This increase can be explained, among other things, by more sophisticated medical diagnostics and trained staff members who look more closely. The everyday care and support of people with ASD places complex demands on the accompanying persons and institutions. The daily work is carried out in the area of tension between the professional demand for individual support and the handling of possible challenging behaviors. The personnel involved must therefore receive the best possible training. Therefore, the project partners wanted to enable a qualitative training for 20 participants and, on the other hand, to create the basis for a Euregional Autism Network, so that the existing expertise can be shared and the trained persons can act as multipliers in their institutions and networks.