WHAT WE DO

Below is an outline of all the services we can offer you to support your child. Our main focus is on children with Autism (ASD), ADHD and complex Neurodiversity.

Our Process

We aim to make the process as simple as possible whilst providing you with the highest level of support and understanding every step of the way.

Initial Assessment (phone assessment)

Our process begins with a fifteen-minute phone call at no charge to you. The aim of this call is so I can introduce myself, get a brief understanding of your situation and assess your suitability for our services. To apply for an initial assessment, please fill out the contact form on this site.

ACS Enrolment Form

Once you fill out the initial contact form on this site, you will receive a link to the ACS enrolment form. This form is an opportunity for you to let us know everything about your situation. It will give us an idea about what may be required, so it is crucial to be very transparent and provide as much information as possible.

You should fill this form out as soon as possible to save time. Once you have done this, we will place you on our waiting list for an Initial Assessment. Please be patient at this stage, and we will get to you as soon as possible.

Primary Assessment

Next, we will invite you in for a Primary Assessment. As a team, we will spend some quality time with your family. The primary assessment aims to help us understand your major areas of impact which can include school life, social life, home life, sibling relationships, performative behaviours, anxiety etc. Identifying these early will help create key milestones for progress evaluation.

Depending on the case, we may need further assessment, but usually, by the end of the primary assessment, we can create a support plan for you. This is an individual plan put in place to meet the unique needs of your child and yourself. Once we have finalised your support plan, we will contact you to discuss it and to provide you with an ACS service agreement. The completed ACS service agreement is your entry point into our care.

What is a Support Plan?

A support plan is an individual plan designed to meet your child’s unique needs. The number of hours involved and the nature of the plan can vary considerably and may include:

One-on-one social skills therapy
Neurodiverse playgroup
Secret Agent Society Learning (SAS)
Cool Kids Learning
Lego Club
PEERs

Your support plan can include one or several of the above together or one after another, combined with ongoing therapy and assessment by our team. Alternatively, you may require a bespoke program with unique elements specific to your situation. The key to the program’s success is developing a trusting relationship between your child and our team as well as a genuine openness between everyone involved.

Advocacy

Depending on the initial assessment and major areas of impact, we may need to work directly with your child’s school to create and advocate for resources that your child requires as well as train their teachers to use them correctly. This is performed with the cooperation of head teachers and is at their discretion.

Assessment

We conduct professional assessment at every stage of the process. However, you will feel the results for yourself as the program outcomes begin to impact your daily life. Of course, every situation is different. Progress speed is dependent on many factors and some support plans may need to be adjusted from time to time.

NDIS

Utilising the NDIS scheme requires prior knowledge of the scheme to get the best possible financial outcome for your family. We will support, advise and advocate for you every step of the way ensuring that you can get the best possible financial support.

Therapy

The support plan aims to create shared action plans for the therapist, schools and parents which complement a range of empirical evidence-based therapy programs designed to achieve the maximum effect in the major areas of impact.

One-on-One Social Skills Therapy

Our ACS social skills program is a cutting-edge learning program designed to deepen human understanding of the social world we live in. Using a multi-sensory approach, the program targets all areas of the brain whilst teaching critical foundational skills for successful social and emotional learning. The program is open to all children, from kindergarten intervention to high school-specific needs and into adult life.

In one-hour individual sessions, social skills therapy teaches attentive listening, conflict resolution, conversation mechanics, critical thinking, group participation, non-verbal communication, relationship management, self-management and more.

Neuro-Diverse Playgroup

It is proven that humans are biologically ‘wired’ to play and that social success in later life comes from this ability to play as a child successfully. Children develop critical routines/skills and play skills during these playtimes, which become the basis for rewarding social behaviour later in life. Our playgroup kids are taken through the social stages of play and encouraged to develop decision-making skills, conflict resolution skills, conversational bonds and common interests with other children in the group.

Secret Agent Society Learning (SAS)

SAS Learning is a world-renowned social skills program for 8 to 12-year-olds. The program uses progressive, fun, ‘secret agent’ themes and colourful sensory games to teach young people foundational social and life skills. Throughout the program, students learn to recognise and manage their own and other people’s feelings and emotions as well as learn coping methods to deal with conflict and change.

Children learn to:

Recognise their own emotions and emotions in others
Read facial expressions
Hear nuance of voice
Initiate, maintain and finish conversations
Generate positive self-thinking, and self-rescue techniques
Ask for help
Understand friendships, and create/build positive equal friendships
Understand when friendships or relationships with others go wrong, including being able to identify bullying.

Assessment has shown that participants in the SAS program develop greater courage, emotional intelligence and increased feelings of calm, well-being and happiness.

Cool Kids Learning

Macquarie University originally developed Cool Kids in 1993 for children with high anxiety levels. Ongoing results have demonstrated a tremendous improvement in most participants and a positive flow-on effect in reducing the intensity levels of the major areas of impact. Many children experience a reduction in anxiety symptoms of 60% bringing them back to within normal range.

Cool Kids students learn to identify critical feelings of anxiety and fear. They learn to use methods to face and manage that fear and powerful techniques to cope with emotions, become more assertive and think in more grounded ways.

Lego Club

Our Lego club is based on the ground-breaking research of Daniel B Legoff. The goals of the Lego club are similar to the playgroup, although it is aimed at slightly older kids. In the club, kids learn to build independently and cooperatively on imaginative and pre-planned Lego projects. In turn, this group encourages the development of a solid foundation of social and play skills. Lego Club is a development program, although it is also very much a social club where we encourage children to develop strong friendships throughout the term.

PEERs

PEERs stands for Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills. It is a social skills development program that aims to teach teenagers critical skills for making and keeping new friends. Throughout PEERs, young people learn to use appropriate conversational skills and apply humour appropriately; handle conflict; enter and exit conversations properly and communicate in person and electronically.

Teenagers who tend to struggle socially will benefit enormously from this program.

For Educators

We provide professional development and critical support in several schools. Our education services range from advising schools on best practices for children with ASD to training teachers and providing educational resources. In addition, we provide ongoing support in dealing with challenging behaviours and designing and implementing safety plans in the classroom environment.

Our professional training is customised to meet the unique needs of the individual school, its teachers and students. Please contact ACS to discuss your professional development requirements.