Mary McKenna, M.Ed. (Autism), established Ireland’s first Autism Early Support Class for children aged 3 - 5 (formerly known as Early Intervention Classes) in her mainstream school in 1999.  Since then, she has worked in a variety of roles while continuing to teach in her Autism class until her early retirement in 2018. These include: 

• Consultant and lecturer with Special Educational Needs (SEN) programmes in Irish universities. These include Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Dublin City University, Froebel College of Education, Dublin, and St Angela’s College of Education, Sligo. 

• Regular delivery of online and in-person courses in Dublin West Education Centre (DWEC) and Marino Institute of Education. These include ‘Teaching Autistic Children: Where to Start; What to Prioritise; How to Thrive’, ‘Understanding Autism: Supporting the Child and Supporting the Teacher’ and ‘Looking at Autism: Effective Practice to Support Pupils to Thrive and Learn’. 

• Lecturer and part of the national autism team for National Council for Special Education (NCSE) since 2010. Duties included providing in-school support to teachers of autistic students, and delivering a full-day seminar, ‘Teaching Young Autistic Children’.  

She joined The Children’s Clinic in 2021 as an Early Years Autism Consultant providing post-diagnostic support to parents of young autistic children. Her many years’ teaching experience have led to her becoming a strong advocate for supporting the child as early as possible. She works to empower the family to support the child: 

• In their regulation, both sensory and emotional 

• In their making sense of this world designed by neurotypicals for neurotypicals 

• By offering opportunities to thrive 

She is a passionate about inviting more ease into the day to day lives of children and their families by exploring ways to integrate support into the fabric of everyday routines so that it happens naturally through daily connections and interactions. She is excited to facilitate this happening within the family in the home community. As everyone knows, the parent is the child’s first teacher.