Spectrum Autism Support Group
FeaturedSocial Skills Groups
Nonprofit serving 2,000+ families. Offers Saturday Social Club, after-school enrichment, drama/tech/Lego clubs, monthly support groups including Spanish-language sessions.
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About Spectrum Autism Support Group
Spectrum Autism Support Group is a Duluth-based nonprofit that has grown into one of the larger community organizations of its kind in Georgia, reporting service to more than two thousand families. What distinguishes it from a clinical practice is structural: it is not a therapy provider billing insurance for treatment hours. It is a community organization that runs recurring programs for autistic children and teens and, separately, sustained support for the adults raising them.
That difference shapes everything about how a family experiences it. There is no diagnosis requirement gatekeeping participation, no authorization process, and no treatment plan. A family joins programs. For parents who have spent years navigating referrals, prior authorizations, and waitlists, the comparative simplicity of showing up to a Saturday program is itself part of the appeal.
Programs built around interests, not deficits
The organization's programming is organized around activities children actually want to do — drama, technology, and Lego clubs among them — alongside a Saturday Social Club and after-school enrichment. This is a meaningfully different design philosophy from a curriculum-driven social skills group. Rather than practicing social targets in the abstract, participants build something, rehearse something, or play something together, and the social interaction happens as a byproduct of a shared activity.
For a certain kind of child, this is the difference between resistance and enthusiasm. A ten-year-old who has learned to dread anything framed as therapy will often walk willingly into a Lego club. It also means the programming produces genuine common ground: children leave with an interest they share with other children, which is a more durable basis for friendship than a completed skills module.
Support for parents, including in Spanish
Alongside children's programming, the organization holds monthly parent support groups, and notably runs Spanish-language sessions. That matters a great deal in this specific location. Gwinnett County is among the most linguistically diverse counties in Georgia, and Spanish-speaking families navigating autism services here routinely encounter an entire system — evaluations, school meetings, insurance authorization — conducted in English, often with interpretation that is arranged inconsistently or not at all.
A recurring, dependable support group in a family's own language addresses something no amount of therapy hours can. It is also worth noting that the parent groups run monthly on an ongoing basis rather than as a one-time workshop series, which is what allows relationships between families to accumulate over time.
Location, contact, and getting involved
The organization is located at 2997 Main St, Duluth, GA 30096, in Gwinnett County, near downtown Duluth and reachable for families across Gwinnett as well as parts of north DeKalb and Forsyth. You can reach them by phone at (770) 239-6630, and program schedules and registration details are published at spectrumautism.org.
Because programs run on schedules and some have capacity limits, check current offerings before making the drive. Useful questions when you call: which programs suit your child's age, whether any support is provided for a child who needs help participating, whether the Spanish-language parent sessions run on a separate calendar, and whether fees or scholarships apply to the program you are interested in.
How families combine this with clinical services
Community programming and clinical therapy do different jobs, and most families here use both. A nonprofit club is not a substitute for speech-language therapy when a child needs help with expressive or pragmatic language, and it is not a substitute for counseling when anxiety is the central problem. What it does supply is the thing clinical services structurally cannot: an ongoing peer community and a parent network that persists between appointments.
Families often pair participation here with speech therapy, occupational therapy for sensory regulation, or a clinician-led social skills group when specific goals need targeted work. Browse those categories on Stiimi to build out the clinical side of a plan.