Lisa Domican
Education
Notable awards
Profile
Lisa is co-creator of Grace App and mother of Liam and Gracie Domican who both have autism. As a parent, Lisa has had 14 years experience of raising her children with autism and has been attending courses and studying evidence based interventions for the last 10 years. As a mother, Lisa fought to understand her initially non-verbal son Liam, and learned to interact with him using the things he liked most. It was the introduction of a simple picture exchange system that prompted Liam to begin imitating and attempting to say the words on the cards he used to make requests. Having created and launched The Grace App on iTunes in March 2010, Gracie’s personal communication development has improved vastly through consistency of use, and the ability to control her own vocabulary by taking and adding pictures via the app.
Courses
Lisa Domican is a social entrepreneur and developer of Grace App which provides non-verbal people with Autism with a simple way to communicate. Here she talks about how to use GraceApp successfully as a communication tool for a pre-verbal person.
If you use GraceApp with your loved one and haven’t attended the training for a while and want to refresh, or have not managed to get to see Lisa deliver this in person, this could help you.
Course Breakdown
1. “Everybody Communicates” and how to identify what your learner is already very interested in communicating, and get ready to set up Grace App”
2. Finding, taking, creating and installing the pictures that you will need to engage the learner and show them how to communicate with Grace App
3. Using Grace App as a personalised tool to teach functional communication that has meaning for the learner.
About the Trainer
Training is presented by Lisa Domican, co-creator of Grace App and mother of two autistic teenagers; 16 year old Grace who inspired the App and Liam, now 18.
As a parent of two teenagers with Autism and a severe speech disability, Lisa has been attending courses and studying evidence based interventions for autism for over 14 years.
Her company, Grace App Communication sets out to demonstrate that independent communication support can be affordable, accessible and adaptable. Her mission is to empower non-speaking and speech delayed people to be able to express exactly what they want in order to build and encourage inclusion and interaction on their own terms through better understanding.
About GraceApp
Grace is a simple picture exchange App that helps you to model, prompt and develop independent picture communication for people with a speech disability or delay. Personal, portable, discreet and simple, it is designed to suit the user allowing them to demonstrate their real needs and interests. The Six Steps will show you how to set up and customise the App to suit the user and introduce it as a means of functional communication, reducing frustration and encouraging independent expression.
NEXT STEPS
If you don’t already have a copy of GraceApp, you can download it from iTunes HERE
Certificate of Completion is available to download once completed.
A short, to the point, helpful course in order to quickly get to grips with supporting someone with Autism
This training course will cover:
• What is Autism?
• Flags for Autism
• Autism as a Sensory Disability
• Techniques that help
• Using Visual Supports
• Motivation and Reinforcement
• Inappropriate Behaviour
• Social Stories
When you attend this course, you will learn what autism is (according to the Mother of two young adults with Autism) and how it affects their children or students in the learning environment.
You will learn ways to help support your pupils, to attend, to organize and to communicate when they need help utilizing simple and affordable techniques such as picture schedules, token rewards, and visual aids.
Training is presented by Lisa Domican, co-creator of Grace App and mother of Liam and Gracie Domican who both have autism. As a parent, Lisa has had 14 years experience of raising her children with autism and has been attending courses and studying evidence based interventions for the last 10 years. As a mother, Lisa fought to understand her initially non-verbal son Liam, and learned to interact with him using the things he liked most. It was the introduction of a simple picture exchange system that prompted Liam to begin imitating and attempting to say the words on the cards he used to make requests.
However, using the same picture exchange system, Lisa was able to prompt Gracie to begin requesting what she wanted with pictures but unlike her brother, Gracie did not begin to develop speech until she was almost 8 years old.
It was Gracie’s complex picture vocabulary that inspired Lisa to create the Grace App as she wanted to keep prompting Gracie’s independent vocalisations and reward her social interaction.
Having created and launched The Grace App on iTunes in March 2010, Gracie’s personal communication development has improved vastly through consistency of use, and the ability to control her own vocabulary by taking and adding pictures via the app.
It is this personal experience that has inspired Lisa to ensure that everyone, regardless of diagnosis or disability, should be given the right to say what they want.
NOTE: You will need to complete the reflective practice module and upload your file in order to obtain your attendance certificate.
Suggested Follow On course: Supporting someone with ASD in the Classroom