This volume provides a range of perspectives, practices, and ideas relative to social work’s engagements with individuals living with autism, intellectual disability and developmental disabilities. Contributors in this peer-reviewed volume include social work practitioners, academic and community-based researchers, educators, activists, and self-advocates. Reflecting different ways of theorizing, speaking about, and working with people with autism and intellectual disability and developmental disabilities, it explores both tensions and possibilities for social work practice, research, education, advocacy and policy development that better meet their needs and desires for their lives.

Kevin P. Stoddart is Founding Director of The Redpath Centre and Adjunct Professor, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto. Since the early 1990s, his primary interest has been children, youth and adults diagnosed with autism/Asperger Syndrome and the co-existing social and mental health problems that affect them.

Kevin P. Stoddart's profile page

Ann Fudge Schormans is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at McMaster University. Many years of social work practice working with people living with disabilities, combined with ongoing activist work, informs her teaching and research. Employing inclusive, co-researcher methodologies and knowledge production, along with arts-informed methods, her research focuses on issues identified by people with disabilities as being important to their lives.

Ann Fudge Schormans' profile page

Social Work Practice in Autism, Intellectual Disabilities, Developmental Disabilities, edited by Kevin P. Stoddart and Ann Fudge Schormans, is a landmark text that profoundly enriches social work scholarship, especially in the area of disability. By blending personal narratives, historical and political analysis, and professional insights, it offers a nuanced exploration of autism, and intellectual and developmental disabilities and social work practice to support people with these identities. The inclusion of voices with lived experience as co-authors and self-authors of knowledge about their lives gives authenticity, respect, and depth to this important volume. Each chapter provides a rigorous, theoretically rich discussion of relevant issues while providing practical guidance for reflective and empowerment-based practices that will create better possibilities for individuals and families who encounter social work practitioners. This is a must-read for any social work practitioner aiming to advance opportunities and inclusion for people with autism, intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Charmaine C. Williams, Dean & Professor Sandra Rotman Chair in Social Work, University of Toronto