Community Support

Community Support Officers Services Charter  The purpose of this Charter is to set out the role and remit of the Community Support Officer with the autism community, (which includes family members and professionals). The Role of the Community Support Officer    The role of the community support officer is to provide support to families, individuals and others on matters relating to autism. The role consists of signposting members of the community to relevant services, supports, networks, and information.  The organisation will make representations on behalf of families on certain matters once all avenues have been exhausted by individuals. This representation is time-bound and once-off and issue specific. The outcome of said representation can never be guaranteed. Every effort is made to answer all correspondence that comes into AsIAm. Autism is a broad and diverse community, as a result peoples needs are different. This diversity can at times make it difficult for the community support officer to answer very specific queries unique to an individual, on such occasions we will do our best to answer and signpost accordingly. We endeavour to provide the autism community with the most accurate, up to date and reliable information across all forms of communication. All communications between the community support officer and the autism community is done through written communication (email), save for exceptional circumstances when a phone call is necessary.  Any information or guidance provided by the Community Support Officer should not be interpreted as legal or clinical advice. The Community Support Officers role is there to support families and individuals in the best way possible, it is important to note that the Community Support Officer is not a clinical or health professional and therefore there are restrictions to its reach. Whilst every effort will be made to provide the utmost professional support and understanding, the Community Support Officer cannot:

• Provide a casework/keyworker role
• Act as a mediator between disputes
• Provide Legal advice
• Attend meetings on your behalf
• Recommend a specific School
• Endorse one health professional or Counsellor over another

  What we expect from those who contact AsIAm  For our Community Support Officer to assist you as best as he/she can, it is important in your correspondence to outline the nature of your query as best as possible, location and to provide all necessary documentation. We expect in the course of correspondence that all members of the autism will always be respectful and courteous to our community support officer when communicating. Office Hours The office hours of the Community Support Officer are 8am to 16:00, Monday to Friday. Responses should not be expected outside of these hours. Response Time Due to the high volume of communications the community support officer receives, it can take on average 1 week for a response to be given.  During holidays or during annual leave, the response time will be longer. Community Support Seminars 2020 Welcome to our Community Support page 2020. Building on the success of last year’s seminar series, AsIAm in association with SuperValu is bringing you a new series of community support seminars framed on a quarterly theme. There will be four themes this year:

• Autism & Communication

–> Link to presentation slides here:

• Autism & Socialising
• Back to Routine (Education & Employment)
• Autism: Well-being and Mental Health.

There will also be one off special seminar taken place throughout the year which will explore topics such as ‘Autism and the Law’, ‘Independent Living’ and Financial planning. Please note: Due to Covid-19 and the changes that this has brought to our organisation and society, our seminar series has changed format. Our seminar series will now take place as e-seminars addressing some of the issues our community is facing. Our first of these seminars focused on ‘tips on maintaining mental health and dealing with lack of structure and routine’ linked  below   These support seminars are sponsored and supported by SuperValu. For our previous Community Support Seminars from 2019 visit our Community Support Archive