#47 - Insights from School Can't Research with Dawn Adams, Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre (OTARC)

At 20, Angelina is studying paramedicine at university and scoring 96% in her exams. A few years ago, she couldn’t get through a school day. Angelina was a conscientious, high-achieving student until Year 10, when she suddenly found she couldn’t do her schoolwork, even in subjects she loved. She describes it like trying to touch a hot plate: you want to, but your brain physically stops you. Anxiety and low mood followed, and with them a cycle many families will recognise: the work brought her...

This episode is a collaboration between School Can't Australia and Yellow Ladybugs made possible through funding from the Information, Linkages and Capacity Building Grant. This is the second of two special episodes with Yellow Ladybugs, who are dedicated to the happiness, success, and celebration of autistic girls, women, and gender diverse folk. Leisa is joined again by founder Katie Koullas and Natasha Staheli. In the first episode of this series, they talked about distress that is channel...

This week we're revisiting our conversation with Jackie Hall, first released as Episode 13. Since we recorded this conversation, Jackie has made her programs available free of charge. That includes a nine week autism parenting program, and Inside Autism, a 16 video neuroaffirming training series for teachers, educators, allied health professionals, support workers, counsellors and others supporting Autistic children and young people. Links are in the resources below. Jackie Hall is a counsell...

We're taking a short break over the school holidays, so this week we're revisiting one of our most special episodes from the archive, the first time we've ever had a parent and their young person on the podcast together. Simone and Yani joined us to share their long journey with School Can't, telling the same story from two very different vantage points. What makes this episode unlike almost anything else we've published is the chance to hear directly from Yani - now a teenager attending TAFE...

Raechel Smart is a former primary school teacher, a parent to three neurodivergent children who has navigated years of school non-attendance from the other side of the fence, and is now completing her PhD on school non-attendance in autistic children at Griffith University's Autism Centre of Excellence. That combination gives her a genuinely rare vantage point, and this conversation makes the most of it. One of Raechel's most striking research findings is that many teachers hold an underlying...