See – say – do….. Making sense of sense making in neurodivergent families

Communication between family members is as complicated as any other social context. In a neurodivergent family, problems with double empathy and misunderstanding are a daily occurrence, leading to significant distress.

These problems also affect communication between neurodivergent families and wider systems, leading to the feeling that, despite being ‘known’ to many services, they are not understood and their needs are ‘too complicated’ to address.

Most of the families Sandy has worked with over more than 35 years are in a constant state of crisis and desperate for a space in which to stop, breathe and be heard. Repairing and rebuilding relationships requires a means of co-constructing communication between family members and between the family and their support services.

This workshop offers a practical systemic communication strategy for working with neurodivergent families which they can then use in their working relationships with others. The approach was developed during 15-year collaborative project to devise a neuroinclusive social communication approach ‘for neurodivergent young people by neurodivergent young people’ (SCAEP; Burbach, 2021).

The workshop is open to all professionals working with families. The day is shaped around practical experience using the neuroinclusive framework in your context and facilitating generalisation within the family and to wider systems. If you can, bring fully anonymised examples from your practice to work with on the day.

Lunch and refreshments are included.

About the speaker

Sandy M. Burbach is a highly-specialist speech and language therapist with 30 + years of experience in assessing and delivering systemically-based individual and group approaches to children, adolescents, young adults and families with neurodevelopmental differences.