JKP attended The National Autistic Society’s conference on Understanding and Managing Challenging Behaviour held at Kensington Town Hall in London on the 6th July.
The JKP stand was extremely popular and received many visitors particularly at lunchtime when John Clements signed copies of his JKP books, including People with Autism Behaving Badly: Helping People with ASD Move On from Behavioral and Emotional Challenges.
In his keynote speech to the conference, John discussed ways that ‘neurotypicals’ can try to understand the root causes of behaviours of those on the spectrum in order to be able to facilitate real change. Afterwards delegates queued up to chat with him, share their experiences of challenging behaviour and buy copies of his four JKP books (see below).
Deborah Lipsky’s new title, From Anxiety to Meltdown: How Individuals on the Autism Spectrum Deal with Anxiety, Experience Meltdowns, Manifest Tantrums, and How You Can Intervene Effectively, was also a big hit with the delegates.
In the afternoon there were talks by occupational and speech therapists working at the Helen Allison School for children with autism, who handed out practical tools for reducing anxiety for children with autism, such as weighted clothes, special cushions, pliable bracelets and stress balls! They also recommended JKP author Olga Bogdashina’s books as great explanatory guides about the sensory overload, desensitisation and the communication difficulties experienced by individuals with autism.
The day was a great success and ended with a thought-provoking talk by Professor Jim Mansell who discussed how services for people with autism could be run more effectively in the future. He is currently writing a book for JKP about actively supporting people with intellectual disabilities and helping them to live as full a life as possible, due to be published in April 2012.
Many thanks to the organisers, to our authors and of course to everyone who stopped by the stand!
Copyright © Jessica Kingsley Publishers 2011.