Hi all this is my first blog here and I thank everyone for the opportunity to write here.
I have worked in the field of Intellectual Disabilities with Adults for over a decade here in Adelaide. I must say my eyes are open wide to the problems and challenges that parents have with children with ASD and Asperger Syndrome.

I was forced out of work due to injury in January 2006 and just over a year ago (December 2008) a small group embarked on Incy Wincy Children's Charities Inc. This has become my saving, I work on it pretty well all day everyday and we are currently in the process of changing our name to Aspire To Thrive Children's Charity.

For a year we had no direction no real purpose until Christmas Night 2009. We were invited to our friends house for Christmas Dinner and this change my personal outlook so it became the Charities new direction. Jake who is very close to me always has had issues with behaviour but a incident happened where adults had a stand off about how best to discipline Jake over his behaviour. It was quite weird to me because you had one group saying he has Autism and the other who was diciplining him trying to treat him normal in my view. In my training and understanding of Autism I just understood ritual was everything and this pretty well worked for me and all I had to do was learn the specialty of the person. Other people liked stirring up these clients and I was injured because of one nurse's desire to throw his meds into the grass. Instead of finding them he came into the kitchen and floored me from behind. Glad to say the Nurse got fired for another incident later that year.

But with children it seemed to me that the routine is there but not strictly adheard to. I know this is wrong but I do not live with ASD so feel free to educate me. But this stand off made me believe we needed to do something so I spoke to Jake's mother. She said she has a possible diagnosis for him but waiting for the test to confirm it. THe waiting list is huge and she mentioned the possibility of private assessments.

This is how we came up with our latest project. We want to start small but get bigger and have 10 children assessed then we will go higher and higher but we also wish to educate the public. If you have anything I can learn from and we can use at our public stall in shopping centres etc. I will listen.

Thank you
Greg
Project Manager IWCC Inc.