aba

[nadia77]

i am kind of confused and overloaded with information i wanted to find out does anyone here either previously have or currently have done the aba therapist or following the programme now? as in receiving the therapy my son is 3 just diagnosed with autism and i am trying to find lots of information on early intervention. i would be very greatful if you guys can advice me on this, since my son was diagnosed 2mths ago we have only been offered 4 sessions with the speech therapist and i am very cross that no other help is being offered, still in the process of being statemented. i feel so useless i want to help my son just dont know how to go about it.

thank you so much for your reply i will get hold of the book and start with that

Hi
We have been doing an ABA style programme with our dd for the last two years. She is quite significantly autistic, but it has given us a way to teach her. She is doing really well and is about to start school. We used a good supervisor who works in Essex and Suffolk. It isn't cheap but it has been worth it. We also have an older child with autism and simply stuck with the virtually non existant help offered by the NHS / LA. We didn't really know much about other approaches then and I do regret that we didn't try this with him too. I think the approach works best with younger children. We started with our daughter when she was just three.

You won't get any help - we get 45 mins of SALT every 3-4 weeks the most of any child in area according to SALT manager (i.e. shut up & stop complaining). Whatever happens you will be your child's most important advocate & therapist - contrary to popular (daily mail) belief there aren't legions of professionals throwing shit loads of money & 'help' your way after diagnosis. It is crap.

We've been running an ABA-lite programme since November last year (ds was just 3 when we started) - we began with 6 hours a week, then up it to 16, then 18 & we've just taken ds out of nursery & from sept he'll be getting 24hrs. We're self funding (hence the ABA-lite, we use an independent consultant) - but I know there are people here who've managed to get funding.

We also consulted Ruth Glynne-Owen in the early days post diagnosis & she was v. helpful.

We have had less than 5 speech therapy sessions in 18 months. We tried to get into special school nursery but DS doesn't have low IQ only moderate autism so not eligible for our only local school. We read about aba at start but waited 6 months for help to start - it never did in any way you would notice. Done aba 1 year DS nearly 4. Everything I read about aba at start still holds it's evidence based, systematic, individualised and works for DS. We have never regretted it. Ds has statement and 12.5 nursery 1:1 but they are untrained and not achieved anything like what achieved through aba. The more aba I learn the more I can't understand how we ended up with a mainstream + autism outreach model in uk there is no evidence to support such a low level intervention and the quality of training is shocking. In my area outreach support is so infrequent and generalised as to be totally worthless. We do most aba hours ourselves with supervisor and going to tribunal soon for funding. Fighting for funding has been the only stressful bit.

We use autism partnership they have good book work in progress which sets out the curriculum
and do free initial assessment and can arrange you sit in on session. It is US company with US consultants where autism therapy is streets ahead of UK