Working with Families

All Birmingham maintained mainstream settings have a Communication and Autism Team member allocated to them. 

For queries regarding the neurodevelopmental pathway towards a potential diagnosis of autism or other neurodevelopmental conditions for your child or young person, please see the following information regarding assessments for autism and ADHD.

Communications and Autism Team Parent Awareness Course (CAT PAC)

CAT has established its own Parent Awareness Course (PAC). The topics and material were written in collaboration with parent carers and autistic young people.

There are three courses on offer:

  • CAT PAC for parent carers of children accessing Early Years
  • CAT PAC for parent carers of Primary age children
  • CAT PAC for parent carers of Secondary age young people

The course provides an opportunity for families to learn more about autism; take home ideas and strategies to try at home; and meet other parent carers and share experiences. CAT PACs are free but places must be booked. There are 6 weekly sessions, offered termly at venues across the city or online via Microsoft Teams.

Flyers are sent to parent carers via the setting SENCo.

Topics
  • Session 1 – An introduction to Autism
  • Session 2 – Social Communication and Interaction
  • Session 3 – Sensory Differences
  • Session 4 – Sleeping, Eating and Personal Hygiene
  • Session 5 – Autism and Anxiety
  • Session 6 – Autism and Birmingham

Settings should get in contact with their CAT for more information.

Supporting Individual Children and Young People

Here are some of the ways we may might support settings and individual children and young people:

  • We work in partnership with the setting to embed good autism practice in their provision. This is achieved by supporting staff understanding and skills and by delivering training
  • We may look at your child’s access to their classroom environment; their relationships with teachers and peers; their communication skills; their access to the curriculum; and their sensory differences and offer strategies and ideas to staff to improve their access
  • We may observe and/or work one to one with pupils in school. The work we do is dependent upon the child or young person’s needs
  • We may use tools that we have developed such as our “All About Me” tool and our “Anxiety Tool” to gather your child or young person’s view of their experience in school
  • We suggest strategies and model ways of working with children/young people to support them within their classrooms. Sometimes these do not work straight away so we will monitor with schools to help support your child or young person
  • We support the child/young person to have their say about their school experience

For more information about how CAT works with families, please see the CAT Parent Offer Leaflet