‘Creative Care and the Capacity to Play’ – An excerpt from The Creative Arts in Dementia Care, by Jill Hayes with Sarah Povey

“In working in dementia care we need often to let ourselves become foolish, unconventional, stop making sense. I have been thrilled to meet staff who at the drop of a hat will dress up, play the guitar, sing uproariously…or who have the capacity to sit quietly with someone without an agenda. It is this joy of the crazy and the still, this lightness of being, which is refreshing and life-promoting in the work that we do. We can play with balloons, blow bubbles, doodle, improvise. We don’t have to make a finished product. By creatively and somatically being with a person we can instil a sense of safety, of physical and emotional security.”

The Passionate Mind: How People with Autism Learn – an Interview with Wendy Lawson

“…it became apparent during my research that the current traditional theories about autism have so many gaps and lacks in them. When I read about autism, according to these theories, the ideas didn’t match the reality of so many living with autism, including myself. The more I researched the concepts of Single Attention and Associated Cognition in Autism (SAACA) and compared it to other traditional theories, the more obvious it became that SAACA explained the autism spectrum (AS) so well. Not only does SAACA explain AS but it gives us access to a variety of strategies that make living with AS so much easier.”

An Interview with Bo Hejlskov Elvén: Making Behaving Positively Possible for People with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities

“Most of the methods used in changing challenging behaviours contain a degree of force or lack of respect for the choices of the service-user. My main principle is that the service-user always has the right to say ‘no’. My job is to encourage her say ‘yes’. That means that if she says ‘no’, I need to figure out what I did wrong. In that way I actually can change her behaviour by focusing on my own behaviour, not on hers.”

Lisa Jo Rudy On Beyond Therapy: How to Get Started in the Community with Your Child on the Autism Spectrum

“Kids with autism spectrum disorders get an awful lot of therapy…[all] in support of a single goal. In the long run, we hope, kids with autism will grow up to be adults who enjoy their lives and achieve to their fullest potential. In an ideal world, we hope they’ll learn to navigate interpersonal relationships, build friendships or even romances, work in a job of their choosing, and operate as independently as a typically developing child.

The truth is, though, that neither school nor a therapist’s office is an ideal setting for meeting new people, exercising new skills, finding shared interests, or just having fun in the world…”