ABA people help-educational psychologist report and ABA shadow

[someoneoutthere]

Some of you may remember my last thread about starting home schooling due to not finding a main stream school who is willing to take ds (asd) on (we are in the u.a.e). Well, we have a bit of a development on that situation now that dd's school has said they are willing to give DS a chance depending on an educational psychologist report. If based on the report they feel that they can meet ds's need, they will take him on. This is where I need help from you. There are few things:

• we have the choice of only three psychiatrist. One of them we don't want to use because she did a 2 page report on DS about six months ago where she basically said DS did not comply to her instructions and therefore she could not test him. Based on her observation, she did not feel that DS should go to a mainstream school. However, our ABA supervisor disagreed with the report at the time and said that as this psychiatrist did not know how to get DS to comply, 90% of the skills she said DS did not do were actually things DS could do ( and we know he could as he has no problem doing it with us). From the beginning of this year, our supervisor has been telling us that DS is ready for mainstream schooling with an ABA shadow as his social skills need working on and he has age appropriate skills on most of the things.
  

• unless the report suggests ABA shadow the school we know for sure that will be insisting on employing their own LSA. This will be disastrous for DS as a normal TA is unlikely to be able to get him learn the way his ABA tutors can ( last time he went to a mainstream school with a LSA his mild autism turned into severe autism).
  

• we will not put DS atm in a mainstream school if we can't send him with an ABA shadow simply because it will not work.
  

I really need help with two things. Can anybody direct me to a good sample of an educational psychologist report so that I know what the report should look like? Also how do I go about getting the psychiatrist to recommend ABA shadow? We intend to have our ABA tutor present this time during assessment so he/she can see what DS is capable of.

[sickofsocalledexperts]

I think the most you need an Ed Psych report to do is acknowledge that ABA is having good results at providing DS with the appropriate motivation he needs in order to work, and that he is clearly making progress using this methodology. The problem then is that schools do not like having it dictated to them which staff to use, and tend to get childish and say "we'll pick our own staff, thank you" (which translates as - "we will not pick your ABA tutors, even if they are the best qualified people around"). The only way I got round it was to ask the school to include my ABA tutors in the interview process and hope they came out best. They did, because they were best qualified and also happened to have experience in other mainstream schools (which helped a lot). The other thing that schools fear is that the ABA tutors will be "too close to mum" - ie will report back loads of dirt on the school and be totally the mum's creature, not the school's. This I got round by making sure my tutors said at interview they understood fully that it was the school which was paying their wages, and they understood fully the need for confidentiality with mums about school matters.

[someoneoutthere]

Thanks sickof. We have not used any other therapy with ds to show that it did not work, but he has made significant progress under aba to move from a classic autism diagnosis to be in the higher end of the spectrum. We are trying to get the tutors from his aba school so we can keep his place at the school just as a fall back provision. It's us who will be paying for the lsa, not the school so you would think we will have bit more say in it.

[sickofsocalledexperts]

Ah, if it is you are paying for LSA then of course you must have much more say. Perhaps, to save them face, you could put it to them that they "interview" your ABA tutors for the role, but hopefully they wlill only interview the one candidate, iyswim. A pal of mine whose autistic boy is at private school pays for LSA and she got her ABA person in easily. Glad things going well!

[someoneoutthere]

I think in our case it will be more about the fact that the school would not want things to get back to us. That's why I was thinking to see if I can find a sample educational psychologist report so when we are instructing we can give some directions about what we are looking for.

Thanks, DS is really improving, little conversations are coming although still has a long way to go with speech. He has learnt to read in the space of last four months and seems to be going through a developmental phase atm.

[mariamagdalena]

I'm a bit confused. I can see why a school would want a recent educational psychologist's report. But if there are only 3 pravticwhy a psychiatrist, rather than a

[mariamagdalena]

I'm a bit confused. I can see why a school would want a recent educational psychologist's report. But if there are only 3 practising locally, why a psychiatrist, rather than a paediatrician?

[someoneoutthere]

That's what they have asked for, I guess it is to establish his educational need. We never had one in the UK as we left just after dx and before ds were school age. I might be being daft but isn't a paediatrician for dx? I am one of those people who went through the assessment process without realising what was happening as never heard of autism before ds's dx and was in denial for long time.

[mariamagdalena]

Sometimes it's a paediatrician or a psychiatrist depending on the child's age. So in our area it's community paediatrician till 5 and Camhs thereafter. Unless there are additional medical problems or you started the process under paediatrics.

I'm wondering if the school are more used to older children who've been diagnosed via the psychiatric route so don't know about paediatricians with neuro, developmental or community specialisms.

[someoneoutthere]

I doubt there are so many options available here, since it is considered to be a shame on the family and most locals keep there disabled children behind closed doors.

[mariamagdalena]

It was one of the gulf states you said, if I remember right. So you'll probably find a lot of the specialists have trained overseas. I would guess that a paediatrician who has a lot of UK or USA experience would be easy to find.

i'm not surprised that theres a small pool of child psychiatrists... who's going to pay for private treatment when it'll further stigmatise the family. Paediatrics (even an unpopular variety) would be a much better way to make a living.

Given that aba is mainstream in the US but not widely funded here it might be better to avoid the Brits unless you've checked out their views first.

[mariamagdalena]

Thinking laterally, semantic pragmatic disorder is an asd, but in a very stigma-filled society it might be an easier label to sell to a school...

[someoneoutthere]

Not sure about using the old psychologist as it was done for the special need school she was employed by and we turned down the offer of the place as we did not think much of the school. If we don't get somebody suitable locally, we would travel to the uk.