KidsAbility, Centre for Child Development is one of twenty agencies in Waterloo Region that continues to participate in the annual community partnership projects with first year Pharmacy students at the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy. KidsAbility continues to seek opportunities to work with the School of Pharmacy, to explore knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer principles and the opportunity to better understand each others work.
In January 2009 we launched our first project with a team of (six) pharmacy students and the outcome was a large community-wide education forum on Autism held on June 12, 2009. Parents urged us to “get the doctors in the room” and to educate them along side the community about the diagnosis and the services.
Our audience was multi-disciplinary including family physicians, therapists and pharmacists in conjunction with families and caregivers. Our goal for the day was to start to raise the common level of understanding across the community about the autism diagnosis and what it takes to support this type of medical journey.
KidsAbility hosted a second event, Autism Forum 2010 on June 11, 2010. We have begun planning for Autism Forum 2011.