My School Experiences: A Toolkit to Support Autistic Students and Their Families with ‘School Can’t’

Amaze was commissioned by the Victorian Department of Education to create a free, downloadable evidence-informed and community co-designed resource to help Autistic students and their families experiencing school can't. The core challenge was that school can't requires a highly individualised approach, as no child’s stressors are the same. Communication barriers between students, parents and schools further compound this, making it difficult to identify and solve what each child needs. The resource also needed to be adaptable for the highly diverse needs and abilities of Autistic students of all ages. Generic information alone could not genuinely meet these community needs.

My School Experiences provides a practical, individualised solution to school can't by reducing communication barriers and upskilling parents to facilitate a child-led exploration of their child's unique stressors and collaboratively find solutions. It provides flexible activities and discussion prompts adaptable for a variety of ages, abilities and interests. The approach and content were informed by the lived experiences of over 700 parents, teachers and Autistic students from a community survey. Content was workshopped with five parents, visually crafted and then tested with six families of Autistic children across all ages before final edits and being launched to the community.

A 2024 Australian Senate inquiry confirmed school can't as a significant global issue. Autistic students are disproportionately affected, with impacts including educational inequality, family financial hardship and mental health challenges. My School Experiences provides the kind of individualised, child-led support that might otherwise require a skilled therapist, available to any family worldwide at no cost. Families report breakthroughs in addressing their child's school can't but also stronger parent-child connections and deeper communication that provide broad benefits well beyond the original brief. While developed for Autistic students and their families, professionals and families of non-Autistic children report finding it valuable too.

My School Experiences is a free, downloadable toolkit available as a printable workbook or interactive PDF. It facilitates an individualised process with families and their children to understand and problem-solve their unique school stressors, through activities and conversation.It begins with a parent guide on using the toolkit including building communication skills to draw out deeper insights from their child, informed by their responses to the activities, making adaptations to meet individual needs, self-reflective prompts to identify and release unhelpful expectations imposed by others, and guidance on using what is uncovered to advocate with schools. Example scripts are included to support parents in having these conversations with confidence, while validating the stress and challenges they also experience.It then includes a range of child-led activities adaptable for a wide range of abilities, communication styles and interests, confirmed in community testing to be effective from prep to Year 12. There are open-ended creative activities, explorations of sensory experiences, checklists of common stressors drawn from community experiences, a timeline activity to identify stress accumulation across the day, and a strengths activity to support solutions. A summary section then brings insights together for school meetings. It is neurodiversity-affirming, trauma-informed and strengths-based throughout.