Meet Up Inclusion: a space for UAB students with ASD

Meet Up Inclusion is an innovative psycho-emotional guidance programme for university students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The theoretical principles emerged out of a UNIDISCAT workshop in 2015 with a presentation on “Support for students with Asperger Syndrome at the University of Oslo”. And it was subsequently launched in 2017 at the Polytechnic University in association with the Asperger Association of Catalonia. And since last year, the UAB Inclusion Service, PIUNE, has been in motion at the Autònoma with 15 participant students.

ASD is a developmental disorder that affects the way a person communicates and relates to other people and the world around them. Judit Oliver, head of PIUNE, explains that “university students with ASD can have difficulties planning and organising their studies, relating to peers and asking for help when they need it. At the same time, they do have skills such as high concentration, adoption of unconventional points of view for solving problems and detecting errors that other people don’t notice. ASD affects different people in different ways.”

As Sergi Mampel of the Asperger Association of Catalonia says, “the Meet Up programme was created in order to enable students to create a social network, to help them with aspects such as anxiety and stress, to guide them with the development of their own identities and to teach them social skills.” Through peer-peer relationships, the aim is to equip these students with strategies for conflict resolution and tools to plan and organise their time, while also providing them with study techniques. One of the students participating in the programme says that during the sessions “we laugh a lot, they are fun and informative. The fact that we are all in the spectrum and share information and talk about our problems means that we understand each other better than we do with other people.”

The Meet Up Inclusion sessions are supported by psychologists from the Association and a teacher from the University and are divided into two parts. In the first, the students are offered a space where they can share their current experiences and concerns, so they can receive adequate guidance and monitoring, in a personalised, continuous manner. The second part of the session is an educational workshop to work on a relevant topic. This year, there will be a total of 10 sessions at the UAB. Mampel explains that “we are working on topics such as planning and organisation, social skills and group work, academic and social anxiety, revising for exams, relaxation techniques and preparation for the Degree Final Project.” For the student “the interesting thing is not so much the information they give us, which are things we already know, but that they remind us about them. It’s good to be clear about these things. You know that there are techniques, such as breathing, that you have, but in moments of crisis you don’t think about them and it's good to be reminded.”

As for the goal of creating a social network, the participating student says “we made a WhatsApp group together and it’s a place where we can talk, it’s a relaxed environment and we understand each other. Here we are among friends and we can express ourselves and understand each other, and we have also met up a few times and that's good, we discover places and it’s fun.”