First public presentation of Bloom Global PET at an autism conference INSAR
event
20 May 2024
Funded by Naked Heart Foundation, Bloom Global PET abstract was presented at the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) annual meeting. The event took place from 15 to 18 May 2024 in Melbourne, Australia.
The project team took part in Poster Session during "Family Issues and Stakeholder Experiences I" section, where they shared the key findings on empowering families with young autistic children: a participatory approach to design and develop a globally relevant family support programme.
The presentation summarised the Theory of Change map developed through the participatory co-creative approach used to design the new family support programme for autism.
The Bloom Global PET is a partner project between the University of Cape Town, the University of Edinburgh and Naked Heart Foundation. It aims to create a new group support programme for families with young children diagnosed with autism. Our ambitious goal is to address the existing gap in accessible support services for such families, as presently, there's a lack of scalable and sustainable autism family support programmes adaptable to various contexts.
The International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) annual conference is the premier gathering in the field and in 2024 it brought together over 1,200 clinicians, advocates, and scientists from more than 20 countries.
Since its early days, Naked Heart Foundation has funded the implementation of evidence-based practices in support services for families of children with special needs. Our experts have extensive experience presenting at international conferences and sharing their expertise on how to provide parents, caregivers, and childcare professionals with access to the latest effective, scientifically validated methods of supporting autistic children and their families.
However, the INSAR conference in Melbourne was the first time Naked Heart experts were able to present the findings from the development of our own programme, whereas previously, we had mainly focused on adapting and localising leading international support programmes to specific end markets. It’s a huge milestone for Naked Heart Foundation’s team, as this occasion provided us with an important opportunity to share our work with leading researchers and specialists from around the world and marked valuable recognition of the programme within the wider autism research and professional community.
We hope to continue attending this unique platform in the future in order to share the progress of the Bloom programme development with experts from across the field and contribute to the global conversation around improving support for autistic children.
To find out more about Naked Heart Foundation’s presentation at INSAR and view the poster session click here.