Autism: Respecting Difference is a concise, straightforward introduction to the sensory and emotional experiences of autism, designed to help support staff, professionals, and families better understand and engage with autistic people in order to offer meaningful and effective support. It is difficult to know how other people feel, since we all assume we see, hear, and generally experience the world in the same way. For autistic people, the world they experience can be very different to ours. Autism: Respecting Difference is designed to help people who are new to autism understand how it might feel to be autistic, and how over- and under-sensitivities to incoming signals can overload the autistic brain, triggering anxiety and pain. Illustrated by artist Jodie Zutt, the book takes readers on a journey into the 'brainworld of autism' in order to better understand and support those who live each day with the challenges of this condition. Adopting a Responsive Communication approach, it explores how to reduce sensory overload while simultaneously establishing emotional engagement and interaction via use of an individual's body language and themes that have particular meaning for them.

Adopting a predominantly psychological approach, this book provides carers with up-to-date information and resources to provide appropriately individualised care to people with learning disabilities who self-injure. Understanding and Working with People with Learning Disabilities who Self-Injure synthesises traditional (behavioural) and newer (psychological) approaches to understanding self-injury, drawing on psychoanalytic and social theory to provide practical guidelines for more sustained and effective support. It suggests that motivations for self-injury may be similar for people with and without learning disabilities, and draws on case work examples to suggest person-centred techniques that encourage communication - particularly important with people who do not use verbal communication - and recovery. The book covers a range of specific needs, including people with autism who self-injure, and emphasises the views of people with learning disabilities themselves and their families about what has worked best, and why. At the end of each chapter, a variety of practical implications for the provision of support are given. This book is for those supporting people with learning disabilities who self-injure and will be a useful resource for social workers, psychologists, counsellors, learning support workers, nurses and social and health care students.

In her influential and successful book The Anger Box, expert practitioner Phoebe Caldwell shifted attention away from the surface symptoms of autism and towards understanding sensory experiences and alleviating the distress associated with them. 'The Anger Box' of the title was a drawing by William, then aged six, of the sensations he felt when he lost control due to sensory overload. The book ended with William's 'Good Box', representing his experience of calm and relief. Bringing together ideas and material from The Anger Box as well as the later Hall of Mirrors, Shards of Clarity (which explored sense of self), and integrating updates and findings from a further decade of autism research, The Good Box gathers and extends insights from a pioneer of the field now in her ninetieth year. It also reflects a further shift of focus away from distress and towards acceptance and more positive interpretations of autistic experiences.

In her new book, Phoebe Caldwell, an expert practitioner with over 30 years' experience working with people with learning disabilities, offers us a fresh insight into autism spectrum disorders. Shifting her attention away from presentation and symptoms alone, Phoebe explores and attempts to understand the sensory issues experienced by those on the spectrum and their neurobiological roots in an effort to find new ways of alleviating the distress that can characterise this condition. The Anger Box is a book of ideas that spans a wide field of research and will be of interest to professionals, but it will also appeal to parents with autistic children, those with a general interest in the subject and many individuals on the autism spectrum themselves. The book explores the relationship between pain and external stimuli, trigeminal neuralgia, visual distortions, sensory overload, environmental and neurological factors implicated in the development of ASD, and a wide range of other areas. Drawing upon her own wealth of experience, the experiences of people on the spectrum and new scientific research, Phoebe presents a fascinating and engaging exploration of life on the spectrum, richly textured, vibrant and above all informative.

Responsive Communication will benefit support staff, professionals and family members supporting autistic adults and children and people with profound and multiple learning disabilities.

People with severe autism experience the sensory information they receive from the world completely differently to those not on the spectrum. They feel cut off and overwhelmed, and their behaviour can become very distressed. This handbook shows how we can engage with people who are non-verbal or semi-verbal and sometimes even those who have speech but lose the power to process it when they are in crisis. We can help them to make sense of the world. Intensive Interaction uses a person's own body language to make contact with them and Sensory Integration develops the capacity of an individual to receive, process and apply meaning to information provided by the senses through targeted physical activities. These techniques can be used to develop an environment tailored to the particular sensory needs of the person with severe autism, reducing factors that cause distress. With illustrations, case examples and a wide range of tried-and-tested techniques, this practical guide provides indispensable tools for parents, carers and other professionals supporting people with severe autism and other learning disabilities.

All humans have an innate need and ability to communicate with others, and this book presents successful approaches to nurturing communicative abilities in people who have some type of communication impairment. The contributors look at a wide range of approaches, including intensive interaction, co-creative communication, sensory integration and music therapy, for a variety of impairments, including autism, profound learning disabilities, deafblindness, severe early neglect and dementia. This wide perspective provides insight into what it feels like to struggle with a communicative impairment, and how those who work with and care about such individuals can and should think more creatively about how to make contact with them. Covering both the theory and practical implementation of different interventions, this book will be invaluable for health and social work professionals, psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors, speech and language therapists, as well as researchers, teachers and students in these fields.

If you have no language, how can you make yourself understood, let alone make friends? Phoebe Caldwell has worked for many years with people with severe intellectual disabilities and/or autistic spectrum disorder who are non-verbal, and whose inability to communicate has led to unhappy and often violent behaviour. In this new book she explores the nature of close relationships, and shows how these are based not so much on words as on the ability to listen, pay attention, and respond in terms that are familiar to the other person. This is the key to Intensive Interaction, which she shows is a straightforward and uncomplicated way, through attending to body language and other non-verbal means of communication, of establishing contact and building a relationship with people who are non-verbal, even those in a state of considerable distress. This simple method is accessible to anyone who lives or works with such people, and is shown to transform lives and to introduce a sense of fun, of participation and of intimacy, as trust and familiarity are established.

Phoebe Caldwell's remarkable new book makes accessible for the first time the complex, intricate inner and sensory worlds of people whose learning disabilities are combined with autistic spectrum disorder and, often, difficult-to-manage behaviour. Based on many years of working with such people, many of whom have withdrawn into a world of their own, she explores the different sensory reality they experience, showing it to be infinitely more complex and varied than is widely understood. She introduces a practical approach known as Intensive Interaction, which uses the body language of such people - who have hitherto largely been regarded as unreachable - to get in touch with them, giving them a way of expressing themselves which shifts their attention from solitary self-stimulation to shared activity. The outcome is not only a marked improvement in behaviour and ability to communicate but, more important, many parents will say 'they are just much happier'. Covering not only the practical aspects of introducing this technique, but also the thinking behind it, this landmark book has much to say on behalf of a group that has in the past largely been denied a voice, and will open new avenues for both practice and research. It is invaluable for parents, carers, and all who work with this group.