Children and Young People

1 Wandsworth Autism Advisory Service – overview

2 Educational Settings

3 Parents and Carers

4 Children and Young People

5 What’s On

What we offer:

If you are a child or young person under the age of 18 (or you have an EHCP and are under 25 years old) we can support you in the following ways:

Autism Groups:

We offer a range of different groups which are led my staff within our service and bring together children and young people of different ages. The focus of each group is different but we have recently run groups that support the following areas:

Understanding your diagnosis of autism
Developing your social skills
Understanding and managing your emotions
Supporting the transition to secondary school
Siblings Groups (see below)

These groups are a great way to meet other people just like you and to gain a better understanding of autism and how it may impact on your life.

To sign up to a group in the future and to be alerted when an appropriate group is due to run, please complete this screener form.

Individual work:

We also offer individual sessions to children and young people. These will focus on difficulties that are specific to you for example, reducing your anxiety, helping you to return to education, understanding more about your sensory needs or developing your social skills. If you are given this support you will meet with a member of our team regularly for a number of weeks (usually at least 6 weeks but this can be longer). During this intervention support will also be given to your family and school to help understand you better.

Pupil Voice:

We would love to hear from you about your experiences of autism and what you would like to change in the world for other autistic young people. Our pupil voice group meets every half-term and does just this. So far they have helped us to test the resources we recommend to teachers and are developing a short video to others who have received a diagnosis of autism. If you would like to take part in this group please fill in this form and you will be invited to our next session.

What do other young people say about having autism:

“It can be a super power but you need to learn how to use it”

“It helps me to remember facts that all my friends forget”

“It was difficult at first but now it makes sense to me and that has helped a lot”

Young people created this autism manifesto from the WAAS pupil voice group, Please view by clicking the link below.

WAAS Autumn Manifesto by Young People

Siblings Groups:

At WAAS we try to run regular siblings groups, for those children and young people who have an Autistic sibling. We normally run the groups in the schools holidays. Please complete the group screener to be contacted, the next time this group runs:

https://forms.office.com/r/SgP4inWkbZ