I am happy to announce that my third book, "Autism, Echolalia, and Sometimes, Blindness: A Practical Guide to Conventional Communication" became available on Amazon in September, 2024. It provides specific, evidence-based steps to help echolalic autistic children learn to use self-created language instead of echoes to make requests and comments, answer and ask questions and more.Find it and my other books on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=elizabeth+ives+field&crid=1R4T2MSL9Q5OJ&sprefix=%2Caps%2C78&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recentI was excited to have my first book published in 2021 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers of London! The title is "Building Communication and Independence for Children Across the Autism Spectrum: Strategies to Address Minimal Language, Echolalia and Behavior." The book introduces nine children along the spectrum including those who have little or no speech, echoic language, moderately functional communication, or advanced language with significant social gaps. Several functional goals in communication and interaction are set for each child described, and detailed procedures to meet the goals are provided. Then, in April, 2023, my second book, "Meet Me Where I Am: Navigating the Intersection of Autism and OCD" became available on Amazon as an eBook and paperback. It is a nonfiction memoir about 12 years of collaborative adventures with Samuel, whose considerable intellectual gifts were complicated by autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, extreme anxiety, and near total inability to comply with adult directives. "Meet Me Where I Am" weaves the story of our collaboration with themes of highly individualized education, the consequences of anxiety and the benefits of acceptance, trust, innovation, patience and humor. I have also been presenting at conferences and on webinars, and writing a monthly newsletter, Autism Fieldwork, on LinkedIn.

For over thirty years, I have been providing consultation services to multi-disciplinary teams of people working with children, and occasionally adults, who have autism spectrum disorders. Much of this work has been with public school teams, but I have also contracted with preschool agencies, teams providing in-home support, hospitals and institutions, and individual families. This consultation work developed from several years of providing speech language therapy to preschool children with autism spectrum disorders and/or blindness/ vision impairment and as they began to attend school my practice gradually shifted from evaluation and direct therapy to contracted consultation services for public schools, agencies and families. This has been my main focus for the past twenty five years and it has been a very rewarding experience which has allowed me to build relationships with many wonderful people. I have worked with people of all ages and developmental levels, have provided services in person, via video, phone, email and webcam, and have written thousands of pages of client reports focused on practical solutions to the many life complications associated with autism. I also have considerable experience with atypically developing blind and visually impaired children and students with other disabilities who have significant challenges with communication, behavior and learning. I have done numerous conference and inservice presentations, am nationally certified by the American Speech/Language/Hearing Association (ASHA) and am licensed in Massachusetts.

Prior to working as an autism consultant, I was employed as a Speech/Language Pathologist, specializing in autism, language disorders, childhood apraxia of speech, and AAC. I worked in a state institution, schools and early intervention programs and private practice; at first full time then part time while my three children were young. From the private practice evaluations and therapy for preschool children I gradually transitioned into a rewarding and enjoyable career in autism consultation.