Davros- or anyone else- BEAM, Tracker and Earlybird

[staryeyed]

Davros I believe you live near me -I live in the borough of Barnet and you know quite a bit about autism stuff.
I just spoke to a lady on the phone from BEAM (Barnet Early Autism Model or something)and she confused me so much. She explained what they do (multi disciplinary team) but also mentioned things like Earlybird and Tracker and I have no clue what they are (other than early intervention projects). Do you know anything about these? She also seemed to think we already had a diagnosis and said we wont qualify until we get one(Sept).

With all this research and different people my head is spinning. Anyone else feel like they are just reading words and nothing is going in?

Earlybird is a national thing run by the NAS delivered by local teams. It's for the parents of pre-school children with an ASD dx and runs for about 6 to 8 weeks (can't remember). It's a course that teaches parents about things like behavioural management, and of course lets you meet other parents (very useful).

The others sound more local, so will leave those to Davros....

Hi Staryeyed

I live in LB Camden but have LOTS of friends in LB Barnet and we attend a couple of activities etc in Barnet. You don't have a dx but do you think it will be ASD or similar? Gess is right about Earlybird but I'm afraid I haven't heard of Tracker, probably a Barnet name for something. My advice for very local Barnet stuff would be to contact the NAS Barnet Branch and the charity called Resources for Autism which is in Temple Fortune. RFA is excellent. There is also a charity run by a parent called YASS (young autism socialising or something). I can dig out contact info for you if you like. I could also put you in touch direct with a Barnet parent if you'd like, CAT me if you want me to do that or if you want to chat to me on the phone (lucky you!). Don't let that woman confuse you, she probably thinks she is being very clear, but us parents know best! HTH

Thank you both.
Davros the pead is certain its Autism but hasn't formally diagnosed yet. My son is only 2 when I looked on the RFA website it looked like it was aimed at older children. Thanks for your offer will CAT you tomorrow.

Gess -are these programmes exclusive ie if you do one you cant do another?

no idea, but I wouldn't have thought so. You do need a dx for Earlybird though....

RFA offers clubs, play schemes etc to children 8+ but I'm sure they could give you some info. I know they have an excellent resource pack and I don't see why you couldn't have a copy of that. They do outreach to families, don't know the age limit (if any) for that but I'm sure it would be useful.