HOW WE CAN HELP
PROGRAMS AND SERVICES
Els for Autism | South Africa believes that every child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can learn and deserves access to effective education. We recognize that every parent and family member plays an important role in helping their child reach his or her fullest potential. Therefore, Els for Autism | South Africa provides families of children with ASD with comprehensive training on how to use best practices in education and management to help them to teach their child. Our program focuses on a variety of areas from daily living skills, the understanding of language, communication and academic competencies, to play, leisure, social and emotional skills.
We currently offer three different type of parent-led supports, in order to try offer the type of support most in line with your needs:
Firstly, we offer a short-term parent coaching approach, guided by the RUBI Autism Network parent training workbooks. The RUBI Autism Network is used by facilitators to provide parents/caregivers a structured, 11-18 session parent training model. Each biweekly session between facilitator and parent focuses on guiding the parent in applying techniques and tools to help manage the child’s challenging behaviours. The treatment manual is designed to be delivered individually to parents in weekly or biweekly in-centre visits. Parents are given homework assignments between sessions that focus on applying techniques to specific behaviours. As of 2019, all families joining our centre will begin with the RUBI training.
Our second service provides a longer term parent-led intervention, which is offered to those families looking for further coaching on how to teach his/her child how to learn specific skills. This service will include receiving sponsored access to an online intervention tool called Rethink Ed, which allows our trained facilitators to follow best practice methods to guide you in your teaching of your child. This is done through direct in-centre observation and coaching through interactive parent-child sessions with you and your child. Here, our goal is to meet once to twice per month, in order to support your teaching of your child. Caregivers are trained on how to monitor his/her progress and are empowered with additional tools and guides to ensure continued effective support for you and your child. Our program thus aims to empower caregivers through parent coaching or interactive child sessions.
Our final service, ‘Coffee Conversations’ offers monthly group meetings, with the aim of learning new tips and tools, while also gaining support from other families in the autism community (please note that this service is only offered in the Gauteng centre).
ERNIE ELS #GAMEON AUTISM GOLF
We further run several Ernie Els #GameOn Autism™ Golf Clinics, to provide a wider range of individuals on the autism spectrum (ages 6-23) access to the game of golf. The program is aimed at developing life skills, encouraging social interaction and promoting healthy living through golf.