Book of the Month July 2019 - An Introduction to Autism for Adoptive and Foster Families

An Introduction to Autism for Adoptive and Foster Families. How to Understand and Help Your Child by Katie Hunt and Helen Rodwell

I loved this book.  Hunt and Rodwell start with a wonderfully engaging statement that they want to be clear yet unpatronizing - and they succeed.  I’m a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry with a strong interest in this very area, and I learned a great deal from the erudition, insight and reflections of these clinicians and didn’t feel patronised at all. I’m sure the families I work with will feel the same.

The beauty of the book is in its clarity and systematic approach.  We, as readers, are taken through a careful journey about what Autism is, how it is assessed and the particular challenges that children with a history of abuse and neglect and/or coming into care might face.  Hunt and Rodwell carefully balance the fields of neurodevelopment and attachment – fields that are often erroneously held in conflict with one another – and show how insights from each field inform the other.  This should be a great relief for parents and professionals – that they can hold both perspectives in mind and, together, use them to better understand their child.

Understanding is the key.

Thanks to Katie Hunt and Helen Rodwell for a book that, I suspect, will become beloved by parents and professionals alike.

Professor Helen Minnis
Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Mental Health & Wellbeing)
University of Glasgow

---