Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre
Partnerships
The Helping Children with Autism Package
The OTARC is involved in three federal government initiatives under the Helping Children With Autism Package.
Early Days Workshops
We work with the Parenting Research Centre (PRC; National Co-ordinator) on developing the Early Days workshops for families and carers of newly diagnosed children with an ASD, aged up to 6 years. The PRC is the lead agency, and other partners include RMIT University, Monash University, and the University of Newcastle.
Raising Children Network
We are also engaged with the PRC in developing the Raising Children Network – Autism website, which is designed to assist and support Australian families affected with ASD (and professionals) with parenting information and resources. The site delivers quality-assured Australian specific information for families with a child with an ASD up to 8 years of age.
The Margot Prior Wing
The Margot Prior Wing of the La Trobe University Community Children‘s Centre is one of the six Autism Specific Early Learning and Care Centres (ASELCC) funded by the federal (and, in part, Victorian) government. The centre is a joint initiative of La Trobe University and the Royal Children‘s Hospital. The centre provides long day child care for children with an ASD aged up to 6-years, as well as providing parents with support in the care of their children and giving them the opportunity to participate more fully in the community. Children receive autism specific intervention (the Early Start Denver Model) as part of their daily activities within the centre by trained staff including teachers, child care staff, as well as a psychologist, speech pathologist and occupational therapist. The integration of the Margot Prior Wing within the La Trobe University Community Children‘s Centre allows for inclusion of children with an ASD with typically developing children as well as being able to provide an autism specific program.
The Centre for Developmental Medicine at The Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne.
The Australian Council for Edcuational Research
The Wales Autism Research Centre, Cardiff
The M.I.N.D. Centre at UC David in California, USA
Collaborations
Professor Valsa Eapen, Chair of Infant, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, University of New South Wales
Dr Andrew Whitehouse, Research Fellow, Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Western Australia
Dr Jordy Kaufman, Senior Research Fellow, Swinburne Brain Sciences Institute, Swinburne University of Technology
Associate Professor Graeme Johanson (Director, Centre for Community Networking Research, Monash University)
Associate Professor Shonali Krishnaswarmy (Deputy Director, Centre for Distributed Systems and Software Engineering (DSSE; Monash Univeristy)
Associate Professor Seng Loke, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, La Trobe University, & Mr Wojciech Nadachowski, appiChar Australia. Associate Professor Rajiv Khosla, Director of the Business Systems and Knowledge Modelling Lab, La Trobe University
Professor Sue Leekam, Chair of Autism, Cardiff University and the Newcastle Autism Group
Professor Sally Rogers, Dr Laurie Vismara and Dr Cynthia Zierhut, MIND Institute, UC Davis in Sacramento
Prof Beth Malow and Dr Suzanne Goldman, Dept of Neurology, Vanderbilt University, USA
Dr Kimberly Schreck, School of Behavioral Sciences & Education, Penn State Harrisburgh, USA
Parenting Research Centre Early Days Autism Research Group, including researchers from Faculty of Education at Monash University, Disability Studies, RMIT University, and the University of Newcastle.
Autism Specific Early Learning and Child Care National Clinical Evaluation Group (link to online PDF) including researchers from University of New South Wales, Griffith University, Flinders Univeristy, and Curtin University.
