KRISTY FORBES

INTUNE PATHWAYS

Kristy Forbes is an Australian based autism & neurodiversity support specialist with experience working with clients from all over the world. This includes neurodivergent people and their families, and professionals who wish to support them, such as Educators, Psychologists, Paediatricians, allied health professionals, support workers and integration aides.

Her work is informed by her extensive professional experience as an educator (Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary teaching), as an integration aide to children with social, emotional and behavioural challenges, and as a childhood behavioural and family specialist.

Her most valuable insights, however, come from lived experience.

Kristy is autistic herself, and diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA).

She is a Mother to four autistic children, ranging from 5 years to 21 years, all with varying autistic expression including non speaking and PDA, and Kristy is married to a wonderful autistic man.

Kristy has the unique experience and insight of many perspectives: the teacher, the support specialist, the parent, the partner and the person (including the autistic child she once was!).

She understands, accepts and acknowledges the very real challenges neurodivergent people and their families face, and the severely misunderstood and often undermined position they are in.

Her own personal journey as an autistic person, and the story of her family is often documented throughout her work in her writing, her speaking, her many programs and webinars and in private consultation with others throughout the deeply personal process of empathy and compassion.

Kristy is passionate about radical acceptance, and the profound need for a paradigm shift that moves us as a society from a perspective of autism as a medical disorder to an identity and a culture that is interwoven with pride, inherent and organic autistic expression and intersectionality with our sibling communities such as the LGBTQIA+ community and many others.

After beginning her own journey as a parent to autistic children, seeking to cure and change autism, she has emerged from the doom and gloom narrative of neurodivergence and into the light of positive autistic identity and family life.

Her passion is to support families raising autistic children to thrive. No matter where they’ve been, no matter the trauma or crisis they find themselves in.