To visual support as well around coping with change.

It can really help if there's a change coming up,

helping with the young person's understanding. It can be used as a behavioral strategy or to help
develop skills. And often we see things like comic strip conversations as well, which again are really nice
visual aids and supports. And really I suppose social stories are around developing greater social
understanding and helping people around their learning and maybe staying safe and understanding
different concepts that are going to come up in everyday life. When I'm working in, in my field and I'm
supporting a family and young person with autism, I very much value joint working. And like I spoke
about the drawing upon colleagues expertise, but also instigating collaborative approaches. So working
collaboration with my colleagues absolutely who may have done in-depth speech and language
assessment, who may be trying out different aids, supports devices strategies and learning from them
on how I can implement them in, for example, an SI session.
So often myself and a speech colleague would work together in that session and they would have
different communication aids they are available that we can implement together in the moment within
a session. And I think that works really, really well. And I think asking a speech and language therapist
colleague, for example, what have you been using in therapy? How can I implement that in my sessions?
What have you covered or what could I do to help with that goal in my SI session for example? And then
using SI principles and using SI approach has been found to be very effective in terms of communication.
And we know in particular that relationship between vestibular stimulation and communication. And
again, that can be verbal communication and non-verbal communication. So maybe you might notice in
our non-speaking clients, I've definitely seen increased eye contact, a change in facial gesture using
things like pointing and in general just aiding their overall sensory regulation, which can really have a
positive impact on their communication.
And then combining approaches with our SI approach. And one approach that I would use would be the
d I R floor time. And the d i r floor time model is really around promoting development by encouraging
children to interact with others through play. So that's definitely something that I would draw upon its
principles along with my SI approach. I feel like they do really do go hand in hand together and
particularly with non-speaking clients where we're really working on engagement, maintaining attention
imitating through play, those kind of strategies. And I'll definitely speak through some of those now. So I
think when working in, in my service and with my population, I'm working with younger children a lot
and and older children, I am really drawing upon play and encouraging play. And often I use a lot of pro
preceptive input and vestibular based activities that kind of roughhousing that kind of deep pressure.
Active resistive work can really help around bringing out some other communication strategies, that eye
contact, that use of gestures, those kind of aspects. Imitation works really well as almost a method of
communication with non-speaking clients. And definitely when working with autistic individuals
imitating what the child is doing can be very, very powerful. Using gestures outside of speech and eye
contact is very powerful. And we spoke about the use of silence and less is often more in terms of
language and words that we're using. If I am using language, I will obviously find out about where the
individual is at with that, but sometimes I am using single words as opposed to using long sentences
with lots of questions. Tapping into the child's interest and following a child-led approach can really help
in terms of figuring out what's motivating that child and what's going to engage them and incorporating
different supports that are going to help around that person's communication and not being afraid to try
out things. So I will often find out what they've been doing in terms of their communication, prepping
some resources and trying them out within my SI session for example. And really it's about embedding
these strategies into everyday life. And that is alternative communication strategies, but also all the
other strategies mentioned there when working and supporting with non-speaking clients.
I would like to thank you for tuning in today. I hope this video has been of benefit. It's covered very
general topics and it really is getting us thinking about supporting our autistic non-speaking clients,
which many of us work with and support. And really I hope it's generated that space for you to reflect on
your own current practice. Maybe thinking about how do you support non-speaking clients in your
practice. Maybe you'd like to share resources that you use that you find useful within this space, and
maybe you might take a space for reflection to see is there anything you would like to change or
implement in your own practice after listening to the video today?
I hope you enjoy this ASIP topic. I think it's really, really interesting and I think it has created a space for
us all to think about how we support our non-speaking clients, be it in autism, mental health, trauma,
whatever it might be. And I think there's strategies across those aspects that we can apply in our
everyday practice. Thanks everyone and speak soon.