Autism 

When I am contacted by a family or agency to provide services, I describe my background and ask some questions about what specifically they want for their child. Many families report feeling overwhelmed by a diagnosis of autism for their child and may be unsure of what options are available.  I provide information about early intervention programs and the most recent research evaluating autism treatments.             

If the family is interested, I arrange to meet with them at and observe their child.  I ask them to outline their specific concerns about their child and provide me with any assessments from pediatricians, autism assessment teams, speech language pathologists, etc.  I then develop a behaviour plan of intervention with specific goals and measurable objectives to address these concerns.  The parents review the plan and if they are satisfied with the plan as written, this plan forms the basis for the program for their child.  I also have the parents attend a workshop in which I provide additional information about autism, recommended treatment practices and early intervention programs.  I demonstrate particular teaching techniques and the parents are given an opportunity to practice these.  If the parents have already hired therapists (behaviour interventionists) they attend the workshop as well.

Once the behaviour plan is written, I help the parents set up their program and provide additional training.  Phone calls, emails, video conferencing and and even video recordings are often used to help monitor and supervise the program.  However these do not take the place of actual meetings with the family, which I conduct several times a year depending on the family’s preferences. I maintain contact with the program on an ongoing basis.  If there are particular behaviour problems such as aggression, self-injurious behaviour, or if the child is not making satisfactory progress in some area, I will develop a very specific and detailed intervention plan to address the identified issue. The goals and objectives are somewhat different for each child and individual families.  A typical plan would emphasis the development of language, social skills, communication, imitation, following directions, self-care, gross/fine motor skills and academic skills.

All behaviour plans must have measurable outcomes for each objective.  If an objective is not being met in a reasonable time frame, then it may be necessary to adapt the teaching strategy.  For example, if a child is still only using one word instead of developing 2 or 3 word phrases, and this is a stated objective, then it may be necessary to change the setting events, type of reinforcement, prompting methods or other elements of the teaching strategy.

Positive approaches are used and the least restrictive most effective techniques are always emphasized.  The following is a partial list of the specific strategies used: Task analysis, errorless learning, incidental teaching, generalization, immediate reinforcement, both direct and token systems, shaping, fading, prompting, imitation and modeling, forward chaining, backward chaining, total task presentation, pivotal response training, systematic desensitization, exposure and response prevention, extinction, differential reinforcement of other behaviour (DRO), differential reinforcement of low rates of responding (DRL), differential reinforcement  of alternative behaviour (DRA), discrete trial methods (intensive teaching with many opportunities for learning), and verbal behaviour strategies, i.e., tact and mand training.

I believe all children have the ability to learn and improve. However children diagnosed with autism need highly specialized teaching techniques. Learning will occur more quickly when effective teaching strategies are used.  Each objective has a specific measurable outcome and the child’s initial (pre-treatment) level of performance is directly measured and this is called a baseline measurement.  During therapy sessions, the therapist records the accuracy of the child’s performance. This allows the therapist (behaviour interventionist), parents, and the behaviour consultant, to monitor progress and identify areas of difficulty for the child.  Periodically, the outcomes identified in the plan are reviewed and compared with the original baseline data to document the child’s rate of progress.