# Working with children with autism



## Jenny93 (Feb 24, 2011)

Hi, My name is Jen and I am an Instructor Therapist for children with Autism and am thinking about moving to Greece in October and was wondering if there was a website where I coud find English speaking families looking for a therapist for thier child.

This would be great help to me and any other info you might have!


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## wka (Sep 18, 2009)

Hi Jenny,
This is a field I've also worked in, but I'm not going to pretend I can give much advice. Just a reminder, if you are only a Canadian citizen (by which I mean, not ALSO an EU citizen, including but not limited to a Greek citizen), you will not be able to work legally in Greece except in very, very limited circumstances (which, to be honest, apply to very few people). So first make sure that you are legal to work here. If you are interested in doing volunteer work, then you don't need to be a EU citizen, but you will need to figure out your legal situation to stay longer than 90 days at a stretch (which is the legal maximum). 

Have you done any research yet on the services for children on the spectrum here in Greece? I know it can be very difficult to find information, especially if you don't speak Greek. I can tell you that, in general, the level of services available to children varies enormously by geographic region - so some children in large cities may have access to great therapies and early intervention, whereas children on islands and smaller villages and towns may have literally zero services and have teachers who have no special education training or experience. So it may be to your advantage to seek out people in places where there are not so many services. In other words, Athens, Thessaloniki, and other big cities may not be the places where you would be able to do the most good, if that makes sense.

Autism and the spectrum disorders are not nearly as well known in Greece as in North America, and seem to be much less common (or at least, far less commonly diagnosed), so you cannot expect to find a huge online community of parents - much less English speaking ones, however I can give you a few websites to get started:

Autism - Asperger Hellas . They appear to have an English-language page as well: Autism - Asperger Hellas 9 times out of 10, English-language pages on Greek websites have only a tiny shred of the material on the original Greek page and are way out of date; I didn't check to see if that is the case here. Usually Google Translate is a better bet if your Greek isn't that great.

They also have a daughter site which is a social network for people with autism and their families - that is probably what you are looking for, right? The site is Autism Praxis It may have some English-speaking members.

If you have any other questions about living, working, volunteering, etc in Greece long-term, I'm happy to help. The issues that relate to those of us who do not come from the EU (I'm from the US, same boat as you) are very different and can seem very intimidating but they can often be overcome with enough information! Good luck! If this is your dream, there will be a way to make it a reality.


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