A Uniquely Human Lens: Supporting Young Neurodivergent Children

Barry has more than 50 years of experience as a clinical scholar, consultant, researcher, and program consultant to children and older persons on the autism spectrum and related neurodevelopmental conditions and their families. He is a Speech-Language Pathologist and holds the Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC-SLP) of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Barry has served as a tenured Professor of Communication Disorders at both Southern Illinois University and Emerson College, Boston, where he developed specialty tracks in language disabilities and autism in the Master’s and Doctoral programs. Barry has published five books and more than 150 articles and chapters on autism, child development,  communication disorders and emotional and behavioral disorders, and has given more than 1000 seminars and workshops in all 50 states and 30 countries.Over the past two decades, Barry and his colleagues, Dr. Amy Laurent and Emily Rubin, have focused on developing and providing trainings on SCERTS Model (Social Communication-Emotional Regulation-Transactional Support) published in a comprehensive two volume manual, and designed to support individuals of all ages who have or are at-risk for social-communicative and emotional regulatory difficulties including autism, and their families. The SCERTS Model is an evidenced based framework now being implemented in more than a dozen countries with the manuals having been translated into Japanese, Italian and Korean with other translations in process, providing many unique opportunities for international collaboration and travel. Barry co-hosts a podcast, Uniquely Human: The Podcast (www.uniquelyhuman.com), with his friend, Dave Finch, an autistic audio engineer and NY Times best selling author. With more than 130 episodes released to date, it has been ranked #1 of all disability podcasts with more than 1.5 million downloads, and has a 4.9/5.0 rating on Apple podcasts.