Special Olympics Australia with support from Sport and Recreation Victoria (SRV) will be hosting a series of webinars aimed at increasing the confidence of sport coaches / administrators, teachers, education / disability students, disability support workers and front line delivers of sport, recreation and PE to be more inclusive in their practice, especially for people with autism.

The 'Autism Inclusion in Sport, Recreation and Physical Education' webinar series will extend on Special Olympics Australia's online learning module 'An Introduction to Autism Spectrum Disorder' found on SOA Learn. It aims to increase the toolkit of the audience by:

• providing practical examples and applications to include people with autism in sport, recreation and physical education practice

• providing a suite of resources to support more inclusive design and practice for people with autism in sport, recreation and physical education

• connect the audience with experts or people who have lived experience of autism

More details can be found on the attached flyer and the SOA home page.

Webinar Series Topics

The six webinar topics are listed on the flyer with a range of presenters: Kellie Tait (AAA Sports Ballarat), Kieran Thorpe (Federation University Australia), Elise Muller (Active Supports) and Robyn Goulding (Sunshine Special Developmental School). Other presenters are TBC, if required.

Webinar Dates

Further dates will be confirmed and advertised shortly but we expect to roll out a new webinar every two weeks from June 2. Days and times will differ to suit presenter's childcare /school / work arrangements and in response to changes of the COVID-19 restrictions.

Bookings

Bookings can be made for Webinar 1 - Understanding Autism, through Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/autism-inclusion-in-sport-recreation-and-physical-education-webinar-1-tickets-101610935042 . The audience will need to sign up for each separate webinar through a separate Eventbrite link. This will be advertised on a new flyer for each webinar and also sent to any registered audience from previous webinars in the series.

Note: registrants will be asked a short series questions through the sign up process. This will help with a post survey and identifying success measures.

Webinar Platform

The webinars will be hosted via Zoom. SOA have purchased an account with a 100 person max audience. We will gauge numbers in the lead up to the event and look at increasing the Zoom capacity if needed. Alternatively, we might direct the excess registrants to SOA Learn where there will be a link to the SOA YouTube page where all webinars will be housed. The resources (e.g. PDF's, resource links) relevant to each webinar will be housed directly on SOA Learn.

For more information, please contacted Sarah Wheaton sarahw@specailolympics.com.au webinar facilitator.