ABA

[claw3]

something i am very interested in finding out more about.

Where do i start?

Who do i approach?

What does it involve?

etc, etc, etc.

Thanks in advance.

Our consultant was £500 per day, iirc. Then you add tutor costs if you.are hiring, for as much as you can afford or have time to spare. Initial set up and training was 2 days with cons. Then he came every 8-10 weeks for one day.

I did initial baseline ABLLS, sent to cons before initial training to give him an idea of where dd1 was at. He was also.available for.reasonable email and phone.contact, in case of issues, at no extra charge.

We ran a part time programme for 7 months (15 hours a week) and then moved house and couldn't find any tutors for the next 8 months. We re-started the programme on 20 hours a week, for 3 months or so, and trunk a place in an ABA school came up which self funded for 4 months until LA agreed last month to fund. We also had private SALT, EP, PT reports done too. So quite an expense, all in all. But would def be possible to save on those costs a bit if tutoring yourself.

Hi Agnes, yes ds was 6 in March, verbal (as long as it what he wants to talk about, he is not 'obsessive' about topics, but his speech is often quite muddled ie talks a lot, but doesnt make sense, uses made up words and doesnt stay on topic). He is in MS.

Academically, school describe him as 'average'. He has lots of sensory difficulties, finds it difficult to maintain focus in the class room, hypermobility in his joints, so handwriting a struggle. SALT did comment to me after her assessment she is not sure, with all his difficulties how he is managing to maintain 'average', she was quite shocked. But he is managing somehow for now.

Wow Star and Silver, that is expensive!

Star ds has an EP assessment coming up, you asked EP to do baseline assessment, what exactly is it called?

I too think i will be shocked at what i think ds can do and what he actually has difficulties with.

Ds has a visual tracking test just the other day and i was surprised at how badly it went and how low he scored. I was amazed as he can read so well.

Even OT, when asked to put his hand into an envelope and pull items out, without being able to see them, he couldnt do it.

When asked to touch shaving foam, he went upstairs to get his 'secret gloves' and came down wearing a pair of socks on his hands!

Every assessment or test, they seem to be finding more and more difficulties.

Each day must be a struggle for him to hold it together.

Just been looking at the Autism Partnership website, thanks Agnes

I had private EP assessment in December 2009 and she did

British Ability scales ll psychometric test (BAS ll)

verbal - word definitions, verbal similarities

non verbal - matrices, quantitative reasoning

spatial - recall of design, pattern construction

also reading and spelling assessment is this the same thing or similar?

Star, i absolutely agree, we cant put a price to it.

I dont own, i rent, otherwise im sure i would do exactly the same thing in your position.

I do however have some back dated DLA to come. So im trying to decide where that money will be best spent on ds.

Oh thank you Star, im downloading link and will definitely have a read.

I cant download it to read

"Don't Shoot the Dog" is a moondog book recommendation.

It doesn't talk about children per se, more about the principles of how we are always training and shaping behaviour (so if your mum winges when you call her that you don't call her enough, she is effectively training you not to call her.....).

After reading it, you can see behaviourist problems all around you.

It also makes clear that some problems are not training problems - a crying baby for instance.

has she had a "that thread" then? I must be due for one soon, it's been 18 months or so since my last thread of doom.....

she's around, but is not procrastinating - is in the thick of real work!
(as I should be - oops)

But she has so many devotees on the board that her advice still gets spread around!

Still cant download, perhaps its my pc.

We've been running an ABA/VB programme for our 3.5yo for just over 6 months. Sean Rhodes is our consultant, & the programme is entirely play & NET based. We do about 16-18 hours a week with tutors atm (but use the behavioural approach all the time) but that's varied between as little as 3 hours and as much as 20 hours depending on tutor availability (major issue). DS also has 6 hours a week in play school which he loves (he's very sociable) but I don't regard as educational (needs 1:1 to learn effectively).

We're entirely self funding & are probably in the unique situation of not going down the statutory assessment/statement route. It costs around £300 a week plus consultant fees (£500/day) ... the vast majority of our income ... but is essential imo.

Claw when we started we did an initial 3 day workshop which was £££ but then just had supervision @ £400 per month and did all the hours ourselves. We do about 20 hours a week. If you can afford to start off and then pay supervision you can do it yourself. I am not saying its easy to find the time and energy, but its not difficult to learn our supervisor gives us really clear notes and guidance - and if you can rope in other half / any family as its good to share it around. It would be too much for one person - its good when you start to do it in pairs. If you live near a uni you can try and get psychology students as volunteers or maybe mums at school to do voluntary work. Of course the best thing would be to train up the school TA and get ABA approaches into school because then you get a consistent approach all day every day.

A nice easy paperback is Overcoming Autism (they all have naff titles) by Lynne Koegal. You can usually pick it up dead cheap on Amazon. Its written by a Mum whose child had a good outcome (its about PRT a version of ABA) and a Psych but its just a nice gentle read which gives quite a good idea of whats involved in lay language whereas I think its hard to get a good idea from the textbooks. It talks about desensitising the child to different sensory issues he had re noise etc if I remember and about play / social skills. I remember reading it and thinking it was the first thing I read about autism that really gave me hope. Its a bit like reading an extended womens magazine article so don't expect too much on the science its not a high brow read but as I say an easy place to start to understand what it would look like in practice.

ABA starts from the point of view that behaviour can be shaped and changed so even something which seems a high sensory need they will look behind it, whats motivating it and then find a way of addressing it. So for eg if its difficulty going into assembly a boy had headphones and played music whilst he walked into assembly and then gradually he had to turn the music down and then off earlier and earlier until eventually he was desensitised to the noise of the assembly and could walk in with all the others. So it comes from a very different angle than you will be used to. You will be used to being told that your DS needs the environment changed so he can cope and perhaps the expectation is that those sort of accommodations will always have to be made (or not and he's just told to get on with it!); whereas ABA starts from the viewpoint that you can overcome challenges and will figure out a way to build up tolerance to the world as it is so your DS accesses it in the same way as every other child phasing out the prompts as quickly as they can. I found this surprising I assumed if a child with autism had a sensory issue that you had to work round it, but ABA will look for a way to solve it, even if it takes months and months of working on it step by step. It also works on reducing stimming which as far as I can tell no other approach does and which is a big factor for my DS socially and in interfering with his learning.

I also second going to see some ABA - most will let you sit in on sessions with agreement of other families and do free introductory meeting where they would meet your DS and tell you what they think they can do. Good ABA providers don't have to go looking for work and will let you stop at a days notice.

Off topic Starlight 'that thread' was mine when I was in a state and called for Moondog and other SALTs to help with SALT results I had had.....she just totally bit my head off about it saying she was not at my beck and call (first time I ever called her name because she is only SALT name I knew and others have called for her help many times in past)...she did get slated for her rudeness and I asked for the thread to be removed because I was upset she felt like that and responded that way and I also thought umm she maybe doing her finals and stressed so a bit not herself and I asked MN to remove the thread as she has been so good in past...dont know why she turned on me...I have helped her with ABA in past to (told her books i.e Sense and Nonsence Book)
She hasnt been back since as I would have liked to have discussed it all with her in a calm way...but she hasnt been back
Just felt I needed to explain!

Star, thanks, success that link worked, i have it saved.

Other links were letting me download so much, then stopping.

Thanks everyone, you have all been so helpful.