All Inclusive? How to Include Autistic Children and Young People in Church

'All Inclusive?' - How to Include Autistic Children and Young People in Church - accessibility, inclusion, belonging, and spiritual development for all. An Urban Saints event. Includes a full-colour A4 workbook, a copy of the accompanying Grove Youth series book, access to video learning, and an interactive online group training session.

Without considered and intentional measures, many aspects of church life can pose challenges for Autistic children and young people.

This practical training provides useful advice on how to make church a space where Autistic children and young people can thrive. It urges children's, youth and families workers to be agents of change within both their own ministries and the wider church community, building a better place for accessibility, inclusion, belonging and spiritual development for all.

Areas covered include:

- What Autism is (and isn't!), medical model vs. social model, brain overloads, myth busting etc.

- Barriers experienced by Autistic children and young people in church, including physical, programme and people barriers.

- Reducing or removing these barriers, and who can help.

- How these changes can create belonging for everyone, including stories from Autistic young people, their families, and church children's/youth workers. 10 ways to create belonging.

- Further resources, links, and information

The 'All Inclusive?' - How to Include Autistic Children and Young People in Church training programme includes:

- A comprehensive colour A4 training workbook with a wealth of information and resources sent to each participant in advance.

- A copy of the accompanying Grove Youth series book which provides further context and depth to the training content.

- Access to a series of videos to explore and learn through, covering a range of associated topics.

- Finally, a Zoom session including discussion groups, case studies, Q&A, and signposting to further resources to investigate, as we wrap this programme up together.

“Thank you Mark for this and for the excellent session on Saturday - This is all very new to me - it was really helpful and I will be processing everything!”

“Thank you so much for the training yesterday, despite having a lot of experience as a teacher and a parent and godparent to several children with sen and additional needs I always find your training helpful.”

“Fab morning spent doing the 'All Inclusive? - How to Include Autistic Children and Young People in Church' training. Really enjoyed it Mark Arnold!”

“It was fantastic as always. Got some more great actions points to put into place. Thank you .”

About Mark Arnold:

Mark Arnold is the Additional Needs Ministry Director at leading national Christian children’s and youth organisation Urban Saints and is Co-Founder of the Additional Needs Alliance, a vibrant and fast-growing online community. He is an enthusiastic national and international advocate for children and young people with additional (special) needs or disabilities and is passionate about enabling everyone engaging with them to be inspired, trained and well resourced.

Mark is the Churches for All Executive Officer and a Living Fully Network partner, a member of the Council for Disabled Children and the European Disability Network, and writes a monthly additional needs column for Premier Youth and Children’s Work (YCW) magazine. He blogs as the national award winning ‘The Additional Needs Blogfather’, and is father to James who is Autistic and has Learning Difficulties and Epilepsy.

To find out more about how Mark and his work can help you, contact him at: [email protected] or @Mark_J_Arnold

Testimonials regarding the 'All Inclusive?' programme:

“You’ve done some amazing work… You do some brilliant training, I’ve been to it, I highly recommend other people to look that up.” Martin Saunders, Director of Innovation and Deputy CEO, Youthscape

“Thank you for the training session this evening. I think it worked really well and was definitely a good substitute for us not being able to be together properly. It was actually really good to see some lovely faces during this lockdown period too. So thank you :)"

"It was really good to receive the online videos and workbook information well in advance of the Zoom meeting. I found that really helpful as it can be tricky fitting everything in at the moment with children being home too. The breakout session during the meeting was a good idea as it gave us the opportunity to chat a bit more freely, so thank you.”

“This is a huge thank you for last Saturday's zoom training and all the materials you sent prior to it. As a mainstream large infant school SENCO, I've been finding it surprisingly tricky to adapt what happens in school to our kids church...mostly because I've not thought about implementing as much of the strategy as I should/could have. For example, I use the exact same one page profiles you showed us at school, but embarrassed to say I've never used them in church. So I found it so useful to think practically about the tools I know I'm already fortunate enough to know something about and using them in a church context.

Lots of food for thought for me to share with our team, especially around interest groups vs age groups. Once we can eventually get back in our building for kids church that is! Thanks again. Your passion for and knowledge about inclusion around additional needs shines through and is truly inspirational. You've inspired me!”

“Thank you so much for this morning, that was so incredibly valuable. I really appreciated the way you referred to siblings who are so often forgotten. The meerkat/lions analogy is brilliant, I’ve got a feeling I’m never going to forget that. Also, the focus on the people who are not yet part of our community but need somewhere they can belong. Annnd finally, the need to make sure that we include God - oh yeah! I feel convicted ?! Thank you so very much for your work.”

Host or Publisher Mark Arnold