On July 26th, a sold-out conference comprised of educators, autism professionals, and researchers gathered at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas for the 7th annual Adventures in Autism conference sponsored by the UNT Kristin Farmer Autism Center (named after ACES Founder and CEO, Kristin Farmer). Senior members of the ACES clinical team were there as presenter experts in the field.

The presentation of Dr. Heather O’Shea, ACES Chief Clinical Officer, was entitled, “Breaking Down Silos: How to Facilitate Collaboration in Education and Treatment Across Disciplines”. Dr. CJ Conard, ACES Director of Behavior Analysis, presented “Antecedent Strategies for Parents, Teachers and Practitioners”. The ACES team was in very good company. The conference keynote presenter was the highly regarded Dr. Ronald Leaf. Dr. Leaf has been a leading professional in the field for over 40 years. His keynote was entitled, “Not All ABA is Alike”.

The keynote address made for a nice prelude to the content of Dr. Conard’s presentation which offered “parent education” rather than “parent training” addressing how to use what we know about instructions to increase the probability that a child/student/client will be able to understand what is expected, be able to do what is needed, and create an opportunity to reinforce those behaviors. Dr. Conard states, “They already know how to be parents. I was hoping to help them ‘learn’ more about working smarter, not harder, especially since they are already working 24/7.” One autism parent thanked Dr. Conard for “making what seemed complicated very do-able.”

Dr. O’Shea also made complex subjects understandable for her breakout session attendees. She not only talked about the challenges associated with collaboration across disciplines but also presented multiple solutions to promote positive teamwork to achieve long term goals. She worked with participants to develop their own actionable collaboration strategies to take back home with them.

Don’t miss ACES presenters at next year’s 8th annual Adventures in Autism Conference at the University of North Texas. The conference will be in late July 2016 and more information will be posted here: https://autism.unt.edu/conference. With such high quality keynote speakers, presenters and content, this is one autism conference that will sell out so be sure to register early!