Abstract
This presentation will compare and contrast the autism teacher training and support models offered by the Ministry of Education in the Province of British Columbia in Canada (BC) and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in the State of Missouri in the United States (MO). The kinds of services offered, including philosophy, formats and content of training, will be described and discussed.
Each year Missouri's Project ACCESS provides up to 35 regional workshops for educators in various parts of the state. Each lasts from one to six days. The staff does not do direct child-specific consultation but rather recruits and trains a cadre of part-time consultants which school districts may hire on a daily consultation basis. ACCESS also trains persons chosen by their local school districts to become the "autism expert" in their community. In BC the Provincial Resource Program for Autism and Related Disorders (PRP-ARD) provides eight two-week training sessions each year at their lower mainland site. Each summer the PRP contracts with school districts to provide workshops of from two to five days in length. The PRP-ARD consultants provide direct child specific consultation for over 300 children each year.
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