Autism Services

Meet with a clinician to address a concern about your child’s behaviour or discuss a specific skill you’d like your child to develop.  You will receive individualized tips and strategies for building skills and reducing challenging behaviours.

Comprehensive psychological assessments are used to investigate complex behavioural presentations that may include all or some combination of cognitive, learning, and/or social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties.  These difficulties are significantly impairing your child’s ability to cope and navigate life successfully.  These assessments may be used to make a decision as to whether their challenges can be accounted for by additional diagnoses including neurodevelopmental disorders (eg. Intellectual Disorder, Special Learning Disorder) and/or mental health disorders (eg. anxiety, mood, obsessive-compulsive disorders).  Recommendations are made to inform treatment planning and enable access to appropriate supports at school, home, and in the community.

This workshop focuses on making activities, like getting a haircut, washing hands, going to the store, or visiting the dentist, more seamless for the entire family. You will learn strategies to help reduce your child’s interfering behaviour during these activities, such as understanding how to develop a gradual approach to increase your child’s tolerance of these activities and situations. This workshop is facilitated by a Behaviour Therapist who is a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst.

This workshop will provide information about emotion regulation in children with autism and evidence-based strategies for improving emotion regulation skills.  Topics will include emotion recognition and understanding, along with some strategies to help children stay calmer.

The McMaster Children’s Hospital Autism Program recognizes the wealth of knowledge and expertise we have within our broader community. This is why we are pleased to offer the Expert Speaker Series. Expert professionals from McMaster Children’s Hospital and the local community provide information on a range of topics of interest to parents and caregivers.