The HANDS in Autism® School-Home Collaborative Network Initiative is a project designed to enable the adaptation and delivery of training and support for both school personnel and family caregivers to meet particular needs in response to COVID-19 as well as the continuous learning needs and the emphases of the 10% CARES Set-Aside Direct Grants funding. It is free of cost to participate.
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During a time of continuous, virtual or distance learning, the school and home environments of students will need to be better primed for programming to be effective.
HANDS is looking for teams comprised of both school personnel and family members to take part in the pilot stage of development and training in a dual training approach. The primary goal of the School-Home Collaborative Network initiative is to minimize barriers due to differences in terminology and teaching methods while helping both groups to increase familiarity with research-based interventions for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related disabilities.
Through this initiative, HANDS will provide training relevant to teachers as well as parents/caregivers in better supporting and working with one another in the novel and ever-changing learning environments of children with disabilities. These school/home teams will be exposed to a variety of training formats and content to learn foundational educational and behavioral strategies (e.g., differential reinforcement, prompting, team collaboration) that better support student instruction.
The teams will also have unique opportunity to provide insight and feedback from their perspective to further improve and develop the training to be used with added teams. As teams with varied experiences are provided similar training as the roll out of the initiative expands, an ever-expanding network of collaborative school-home teams will be established for added training and support state-wide. Such efforts will serve to optimize outcomes for students with ASD and related disorders even in the most challenging learning contexts.
Funded through the IDOE 10% CARES Set-Aside Funding, this initiative is free to all teams applying and accepted for participation with HANDS in Autism®.
Please find out more by contacting HANDS in Autism® at hands@iupui.edu. If ready to apply, press the “Register” button.
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