There is a notable increase of cases of people with ASD and, accordingly, higher number of adults and elderly with ASD. So, there is an urgent need of disposing professionals with enough knowledge, skills and competences to provide a quality and efficient service to these persons and their families. In this regard, IPA+ project responds to these needs to better prepare different kind of professionals for competent care or attention in order to respond to the demands of this population. Thus, the project aims to strengthening skills of professionals working (presently or expected in the future) with people with autism through the development, at European level, of a course that will be based on basic and specific and real curricular requirements. So, the project entails the development, implementation, transfer and dissemination of an innovative training focused on a minimum package of theoretical contents, intervention strategies as well as professional competences and attitudes enabling professionals dispose a basic background to deal with autism in different labour settings. Moreover, the specific objectives of IPA+ are: - To know the curricular and training requirements of a course of this nature addressed to professionals working with people with ASD.- To define the basic knowledge and competences about autism that every professional must have for a competent and satisfactory care based on the research about curricular requirements.- To design a new training and work based learning for the development of competent professionals from different fields.- To implement this training in a sample of professionals in the different countries participating in the project.- To evaluate the quality of the course.- To make freely available all project outputs for potential users and stakeholders through the development of a toolkit.- To hold national and international conferences for disseminating the project outputs. - To establish a network of people working on ASD projects for knowledge exchange and co-creation.IPA+ involves 5 entities from 4 different countries: - Polibienestar Research Institute from the University of Valencia, Spain (coordinator of the project).- Autismo Burgos, Spain.- Portuguese Federation for Autism, Portugal.- Serbian Society of Autism, Serbia.- Autism Europe, Belgium.The coordinator is a research institute at a public university with a large know-how on ASD, research and methodologies. The three involved autism associations will be involved in the different activities in a close contact with our target users. And, an international association with strategic alliances with a large number of partners will be in charge of the project dissemination and evaluation.The project will begin with a research on curricular and training requirements for professionals in the field of ASD through a mixed methodology: review of the literature and the organisation of focus groups with relevant stakeholders. The results of this research will be crucial for the development of the subsequent phases of the project. Secondly, the curriculum will be developed on the basis of the curricular research and will be validated with experts through a Delphi study. Once the curriculum will be ready, partners will develop the associated learning units. Through a complementary learning activity, these learning units will be piloted among key persons from each partner organisation and also validated by the whole consortium. This learning activity will be very relevant to train the future trainers of the course which will be implemented in Spain, Portugal and Serbia by a blended format. Finally, the main findings and outputs developed in the project will be compiled in an attractive, useful and easy-to-use format through a Toolkit which will be available at the IPA+ website.IPA+ will deliver a research, a curriculum and associated learning units, a validated course and a toolkit for a wide kind of professionals working with people with ASD or interested in this labour sector. These outputs will be supported by a comprehensive and integrative assessment along the different activities framed in the project, as well as by a complete package of dissemination activities, such as multiplier events, a project website, eNewsletters, etc. So, IPA+ is expected mainly to:1. Raise awareness and increase knowledge of ASD for different profiles of professionals.2. Increase background, motivation, willingness and confidence of professionals to work with people with ASD. 3. Increase collaboration and cooperation between service providers in the field of autism and other organisations from different fields: education, healthcare, social services, etc.4. Generate a good practice at European level regarding training of professionals working with people with ASD agreed by experts from different countries.5. Create open-access resources and outputs for a wide and relevant audience of stakeholders.

"People with autism are ""the most excluded population among the excluded."" In Portugal, there are many specific employment measures for people with disabilities and there is a growing awareness about the need to enable and include people in the society. Within social interaction, people with autism may not understand the unwritten social rules that others usually pick up without thinking. Thus, people with ASD can experience difficulties interacting with managers and colleagues, which can hinder their inclusion in the workplace. Sometimes its difficult to find a job and to keep it. The IVEA Project, Innovative Vocational Educational for Autism (partnership Hungary, Spain, Greece, Autism-Europe, Catholic University coordinated by Portugal, Federação Portuguesa de Autismo) intends to foster the employment for people with autism creating a European Guide for the effective vocational training of people with ASD. This Guide will contain the transversal competences that lack in their usual training courses and will be available in an application for smart phones, besides other devices. The objectives of the IVEA project are: - Inclusion of people with ASD through employment;- Increase the work opportunities of people with ASD; - Foster the development of transversal competences introducing them in the training and testing them in real context; - Conceive an innovative European Guide for the effective vocational training of people with ASD; - Raise awareness in people with ASD, their families, professionals and the population, by and large, on inclusive employment. The guide will be the result of two different training courses tested in two pilot tests: one for people with ASD and the other for representatives of potential employers (stakeholders, staff from NGO’S, administrative departments, shops). The tests will take place in 3 European countries , partners of the project, Hungary, Spain and Portugal. The pilot test will be tested by 12 participants with ASD from each country and 15 representatives of future employers. To design and structure the courses, the partnership of the project put in practice 3 Focus groups (1 for people with ASD, other for families and the other for future employers) in Hungary, Spain and Portugal; a survey near the stakeholders and a review of literature on the employment."

Young Mediators for inclusion” (YMI).Most of the children and young people with autism still live on the margins of society. Almost all institutions that work in this area, develops specific activities directed only to children with autism, in segregated groups, accompanied by therapists. This reproduces paths of exclusion, stigmatization, discrimination and early institutionalization. In view of this diagnosis, the Portuguese association Inovar Autismo (Innovate Autism), designed the Project “Young Mediators for inclusion” (YMI). This project promote the participation of children/young people with autism in activities developed by community structures, on equal terms withtheir pairs, through the support of “young mediators for inclusion”. This will allow a progressive transformation of community structures, which will certainly prolong the project's impact in a sustainable way once the project is over.The YMI aims to: (i) design and test in three European countries an innovative / pilot methodology to include children / youth with autism in regular community structures (sports clubs, cultural and recreational associations, activities promoted by municipalities, etc. ), on an equal basis with other children through technical follow-up (mediators for inclusion) and through evaluation and necessary adaptations; ii) training “young mediators for inclusion” (facilitating agent that promotes the inclusion in articulation with the family and contexts); iii) training technicians and other staff of all community partners, in order to ensure the full participation of children/with autism; iv) design a European guide for the inclusion of children/youth with autism.To implement this innovative project has been established a consortium which includes 4 european associations (Inovar Autismo, Autismo Burgos, Autism Europe and Diversamente Onlus), a portuguese university (ISCTE Business School) and a partner entity specializing in new technologies (Interactive media knowledge transfer intermediate).

CONTEXT: Autism is a life-long condition characterized by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and also difficulties in flexibility in thinking and behaviour. Autism Spectrum Disorders are diagnosed in at least 1% of the population, and it is estimated that 25-50% of individuals with autism also have intellectual disability/learning difficulties. Visual supports for both receptive and expressive communication are examples of autism-specific supports that have evidence for their effectiveness. Very often, these visual supports are provided by means of smart devices such as smartphones or smartwatches. However, the number and variety of technological solutions for people with disabilities is so big that is very difficult for families and professionals working with students with disabilities to find appropriate solutions. Professionals and parents need support, tools and protocols for identifying the most appropriate support that is available for individual children with autism and/or learning disabilities. OBJECTIVES: The main objectives of SMART-ASD are to provide teachers and parents with tools to facilitate person-technology matching, to train them on basic concepts on ASD & IT as well as on the use of the above-mentioned tools, and to study the process of introducing this tool in a sample of students with ASD of the participating schools. Other complementary objectives were learning from students with ASD from the six participating school, visiting each other to learn good practices and to transfer knowledge between the 11 participants organisations of the three countries involved.PARTICIPATING ORGANISATIONS: The project has been developed by a multi-sectorial team, including researchers from the three participating universities (UVEG, UBAH and NECMETIN), teachers and families from the six schools involved (AUTISMO BURGOS, AUCAVI, MIRAM, SANT CRISTÒFOL, FATMA and MERAM Schools) and continuous training institutions from regional governments (CEFIRE-GVA and KONYAMEM). MAIN ACTIVITIES:Together with the technical activities for developing the three intellectual products of the project that are mentioned below, SMART-ASD has celebrated four transnational meetings (in Valencia, Bath, Burgos and Valencia) together with one training action (Bath) and two multiplier events (Konya and Valencia).RESULTS AND IMPACT:SMART-ASD has developed a fully functional software App, available at App Store and Google Play, aimed at assessing individual basic skills for using tablets and smartphones and also contextual information that provides personalised recommendations on the most appropriate apps for each individual, together with tools for planning and follow-up. This was the first intellectual product.SMART-ASD has also developed a MOOC, available in several languages at Futurelearn.com, for training teachers and professional on basic concepts on ASD and IT and also on the use of the SMART-ASD App. This was the second intellectual product.SMART-ASD has also developed a research study on the process of introducing SMART-ASD app on a sample of students from the participating schools of the project (from Spain and Turkey). This study has found important benefits and also has informed the update of the app in order to improve its functionality and usability.The high number of SMART-ASD App downloads together with the high number of students who registered and completed the SMART-ASD MOOC in the four languages available (Spanish, English, Turkish and Valencian) shows an important impact. The two multiplier events had been very useful in spreading information about the project results, with 170 attendees of the multiplier event in Konya (Turkey) and 550 attendees in the multiplier event of Valencia (Spain). LONG TERM BENEFITS:The project coordinator has reached an agreement with the company Appycally, owner of the popular website for searching autism apps www.appyautism.com to include SMART-ASD app as a key tool for this website aims. According to this agreement, SMART-ASD app will include references to that website and the App will be part of the home page of that website. Also, the regional government of Valencia and Konya MEM are promoting the use of SMART-ASD App as a best practice for assessing the IT needs of students with ASD and to plan resources for them.The online courses in MOOC portal in four different languages will be available for the people who would like to benefit from the content prepared in scope of this project.