The Birthday Party

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A film about the SIGNS of autism in children.

We are delighted to share with you The Birthday Party a training film for professionals. This second edition (2018) incorporates new feedback from the autism community, following additional consultation, and is available in multiple languages. The film was produced as a partnership project between government, university and clinical partners and has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Welsh Government. Its development was based on Cardiff University led research, click here to read the article.

Who is the film for?

The film has been designed to help front-line professionals to identify the signs of autism in children. We designed it to be suitable for professionals working in education, health-care and social services, as a supplement to a training session. No background knowledge or training is required before viewing the film.

If you would like to use the film for training or for a group, please complete and return the permission form below.

The purpose of the film is to help increase awareness in professionals and especially for flagging up concerns that may be relevant for referral. In a training session the film can be paused to facilitate further discussion with a trainer. The discussion can be about variation in how the signs may present and how the signs form a pattern or cluster to look out for.

Positive feedback from a wide sample of parents and professionals has led to the film being made available to the wider public. Click here to see the feedback; sites.cardiff.ac.uk/warc/birthday-party-film-evaluation and here sites.cardiff.ac.uk/warc/about-us/project-reports to read more about how we came to make the film.

What is the film about?

The film describes the signs of autism seen in three children at a birthday party. The message of the film is that the same signs can show themselves in different ways. Because of these differences, sometimes the signs can be easy to miss. The signs can also be common in children without autism too so it is important to look for the pattern in which they present.

Two of the children in the film, Jack and Rhys are boys and one, Amy, is a girl. All are quite different and while Amy shows a different profile from both the two boys, this profile is not intended to show a ‘typical’ female profile of autism; each child is unique, regardless of their gender. No two girls and no two boys will have an identical presentation of the signs.