Why we need your help

The Transforming Autism Project (TAP) is a new autism charity with a focus on early detection and intervention. We also offer a distinctive and empowering conception of autism that challenges the traditional view of autism as an impairment and emphasizes the great potential inherent within each autistic child.

Our new family services are designed to unlock and nurture that potential, and to facilitate the best possible quality of life and future prospects of happiness and success for each child.

The interventions we offer do not treat autism as illness or aim to modify a childs behaviour. Instead we propose a respectful approach that unlocks an autistic child's inner potential to live a contented and fulfilling life.

What Is the In-Home Support and Whats Unique About It?

This is Transforming Autisms first direct face-to-face support programme and the cornerstone of our new Family Services.

We propose therapy in the home environment because thats the best way a therapist can really focus on the dynamics of one family at a time and tune into the child and their needs in their own environment.

An experienced specialist child-psychotherapist will visit the family home on a weekly basis for one hour to work with the family and the child with a view to improving mutual understanding, reducing the childs anxiety, improving relationships and giving the child the best possible opportunities for growth and personal development.

We focus on crucial factors for a childs wellbeing that are traditionally neglected by conventional approaches, but which we understand to be central to the optimal development of a child, including:

Helping parents to understand their childs experience and what they are attempting to communicate

Helping parents to know and feel confident in understanding & responding to their childs needs

Creating a nurturing trust-based relationship between parent and child

Creating a safe, accepting environment around the child, free of over-stimulation

Our therapists will first observe and get to know the child and parent(s) at home, and then coach and train the parents in the areas above, working themselves with the child as part of this process. A treatment plan will be drawn up for each family and regularly reviewed to ensure were doing the very best we can.

How Long Do We Work With Each Family?

The service is intended to be ongoing. Typically, therapists such as ours work with a family for 1-2 years to see the most significant results that can then be sustained. We will have regular checkpoints with each of our families to understand and decide together whether we should continue, adapt or end the service. We envisage that there will be 48 sessions per family per year.

Who Are Our Therapists?

Our therapists are all registered professional child-psychotherapists and have experience and deep understanding of working with autistic children, and they all resonate deeply with Transforming Autisms approach to autism and to working with autistic children.

They are all Integrated child-psychotherapists, meaning they bring together many theories and practices of working with children, all of them focused on building relationships with the child and family and focusing on their social and emotional development and their emotional well-being (as opposed to training them in specific desired behaviours). They are likely to use play as a primary means of communicating and establishing an ongoing relationship with the child.

You can meet our therapists, see a short video introduction from each of them, as well as webinars that they have recorded for our families on the webinars page of our website https://transformingautism.org/webinars/ You can also find out which areas each of them operates in.

Why Are We Offering This Service?

Feedback from the Autism Parenting Community has highlighted a real gap in the support available to them in terms of being able to manage daily life with their children. Like these parents (and many of us are Autism Parents ourselves), we deeply recognise this lack, and understand the profound difference this sort of support could make in the lives of autistic children and their families.

What Results Can Be Expected?

Our services aim to bring about the following benefits for the participants:

For the Parents:

Better and deeper understanding of their child

Deeper emotional connection with their child

Confidence in how to parent therapeutically

A better understanding about stress triggers in their child, themselves and in the family system and how to prevent and reduce the stress

New ways of relating with and enjoy being with their child

A deeper ability to advocate for their children

For the Children:

A feeling of being truly understood

Confidence and trust that their parents can look after their interests

A stronger emotional connection with their parents

A sense of safety in their environment

Improved play and social communication skills

A less over-stimulated environment

Greater ability to manage over-stimulation

A better ability to manage their feelings

More emotional resilience

An ability to heal and recover from traumatic experiences

A stronger sense of self and other

A greater ability to self advocate