Autism is a mental disease occurring more frequently among children and has drawn public attention worldwide.
On October 15 and 16, the Amity International Seminar on Autism & Workshop on Field Skill in Autism Education were held by the Amity Foundation and Nanjing Brain Hospital, affiliated to Nanjing Medical University. Reports and speeches were addressed around the topic "Adapting and Challenges School-aged Children with Autism Face".
The Amity Foundation reports that the reason why the activity is held is that in the recent two decades, the incidence of autism in Jiangsu has increased to more than a hundred. In this group suffering from autism, the intervention demand for the school-aged children has been growing along with the rising demand of early rehabilitation and intervention for pre-school children. However, problems lie in the education of these autistic children due to low teaching level, insufficient education resources and inadequate social support.
Due to these difficulties, some autistic children who have trouble communicating and have behavior problems but have good brain development are rejected to enroll in normal schools. As a result, they are losing educational opportunities for their development. To deal with this challenge, Amity has invited globally-renowned specialists, scholars and famous social activists to share the newest and the most authoritative research results, education rehabilitation skills and social support projects regarding autism with the attendants.
Zhao Long, a consultant of Amity and former high-position official, claims that this seminar focuses on the "education integration" aspect of the issue and the goal to popularize the education integration concept which can be achieved through system construction, cooperation between schools and parents, co-construction by teachers and students, mutual company and assistance and community's participation.
Besides Long, Sunny Chan, a famous Hong Kong actor, also shares the "love story" between his son with autism and himself. As a father of an autistic kid, Chan says that fathers plays a critical role in the course of a child growing up and his role cannot be replaced by a mother. He calls on to all the fathers to be aware of their responsibility and try to accompany their children more than satisfy their children's financial need.
