Changing duty stations is hard for Mark Conatser. Like a lot of 15-year-olds, he's thinking about college and getting ready to start driver's ed, and a shift in his routine complicates all of that.

Mark also has Asperger's syndrome, a developmental disorder on the autism spectrum, which makes moves even harder.

"It's a really big change ... and these kids don't take change very easily," his mom, Army spouse Amy Conatser, said.

If that weren't complicated enough, Mark has all sorts of appointments to get to each week, and they're not always conveniently located. That's what brought the family to the first-ever South Sound Autism Partnership Conference in Tacoma March 24.

"We want to go to a doctor where we live," Amy said.

Many families with children affected by autism spend hours every week driving to and from appointments, but more and more resources are available in the South Sound area.

"Families don't know that staying here is an option," University of Washington Tacoma Autism Clinic director Dr. Steve Altabet said.

It was Altabet and other area stakeholders who formed the South Sound Autism Partnership over a year ago. Many of them have been helping plan the conference since last September, to help connect families to resources and to each other.

Among them was representation from Joint Base Lewis McChord's Army Community Service Exceptional Family Member Program and the Madigan Army Medical Center's Autism Spectrum Disorders Clinic.

There are challenges and benefits to being a military family affected by autism, according to ASD Clinic director Dr. Tom Clingan. Tricare offers insurance coverage for services that are frequently unavailable in the civilian world, but the stress of moves and deployments are particularly difficult for those on the autism spectrum.

"It just really can compound it," he said.

With every move families have to reassemble the services autistic children received at one post or another, and they're not always nearby. It's a situation that Sybille White, an Army spouse and mother of an autistic son, is trying to correct. She helped plan the conference, and knows first-hand that finding outside services can be difficult when moves are frequent.

"There's all these other resources out there, and I think that's missing sometimes when you move from one base to another, that sense of community," she said.

That community can be crucial, according to Altabet. So, in addition to sessions directed at three distinct age groups and local vendors providing all kinds of services (from sports teams to banking and legal services), the conference featured a community café lunch that allowed participants to connect to each other and the topics closest to them.

A military table offered the chance for those in the JBLM community to have lunch with Clingan, nurses from MAMC, EFMP representatives and any number of other parents that know about what they're going through.

"It's community and base combined," White said.