Children's Autism Support Service

Providing support to parents/carers with young people aged 5-18 years old with an Autism Spectrum Condition.

The Children’s Autism Support Service run by Barnardo’s can help you by offering you Cygnet Parenting Programme if your child has a diagnosis or by working with you and your child on a one-to-one basis if you are currently undergoing a diagnosis for Autism.

How do you access the Children’s Autism Service?
Your family will be referred to Barnardos via Families First Advice Line. Once we have received your information, we will contact you and discuss your child and family needs to work out how we can help you. Following discussions, we will offer you a service via the Cygnet Group or one to one support.

One to one support:
Barnardos can offer you one-to-one support based on your needs. We can provide practical support and advice for up to twelve weeks and this can be in your home, online or another venue that you are familiar with. This support can be made up of parenting and behavioural advice and include support for your child. Once your child has received a diagnosis of Autism, we will enrol you on our Cygnet Parenting Programme.

What is Cygnet?
The Cygnet parenting programme is an evidenced based programme that has been designed to support parents/carers in understanding and management of Autistic Spectrum Condition and any additional behavioural difficulties. The Cygnet programme has been run over many years and has proven to help many parents and carers.

How will it help me?
Cygnet programme will help you understand parenting children/young people on the autistic spectrum. You will be able to use some of the parenting strategies learned throughout the course and gain an understanding of Autism.

It is acknowledged that parenting is a challenging job!

After diagnosis, parents and carers can have a lot of questions and may feel isolated in managing their child’s needs. Children and young people’s development needs change over time, and as a parent information and advice received when a child is younger may need to be updated to help support parents /carers as the child gets older.

Overview of the course.
The programme is run over 7 sessions lasting between 2.5 and 3 hours. Twelve Parents are invited to attend each session and your Cygnet Group will have the same parents each time allowing you to build up networks of support.

Each week a different topic is discussed, and we will provide you with additional learning materials to support the sessions.