ips-aiims

Vision For Effective Therapeutic Programing For Children With Autism

While working in two urban school districts teaching students diagnosed with severe autism, I realized these children need more than educational programming. They need a therapeutic environment. Staffers need to have the knowledge and the resources not just to teach skills but also to relieve discomfort and improve neurological function. Movement, Auditory and visual processes, and sensory disturbances affect the ability to attend and learn. Most teachers are not adequately trained to deal with these complex neurological and central nervous system differences. Staffers who lacked appropriate training often confused these difficulties with cognitive or social dysfunction.

Creation of therapeutic and effective environments, demands staff education, collaboration between disciplinarians and change of criteria and delivery models. Experts in the fields of speech, occupational, physical, and vision therapy must work with teachers and parents to create a program specific for severe autism.

Selected personnel, appropriately licensed and motivated, could be sent to alternative healing training sessions. Therapeutic listening, auditory integration training, biofeedback, interactive metronomes, binaural beats or other rhythmic entrainment programs, sacral cranial, massage, reiki, aromatherapy, yoga, meditation, movement therapies, acupressure, reflexology and hypnotherapy might be considered. Most parents I worked with had limited outside resources to address the complex issues related to the disability of their child. Many were on Title 19, which many therapists were unwilling to accept.

Districts could enlist someone from the ASA to serve as an information source for parents concerning diet, enzymes, supplements, chelating procedures, and other myriad other options out there.

Development of supportive environments would help to insure maximum use of resources in urban districts struggling with budget issues. Programs should be placed at sites that can best meet the sensory and motor needs of the children. Schools ideally should have: " Quiet classrooms with natural light and adequate space for sensory equipment." Pools and playground equipment that provided for vestibular input " Proximity to a variety of parks and nature walks " Close access to community facilities allowing for cost-effective and flexible community based programs.

Administrators need to arrange time for teachers, assistants, and parents to consult with the team and implement and refine strategies for continued optimum growth of each student. As teams develop, roles would overlap; sensory problems, movement difficulties, communication, behavioral concerns, and rhythm issues would be addressed in all areas of the curriculum throughout the day.

Teachers, assistants and parents would be more confident in their ability to deal with ongoing complex neurological, sensory and movement difficulties as they continued to consult and collaborate with experts in specific disciplines. Turbulence and stress in students would decrease as they took refuge in the support of a highly trained and confident staff.

A paradigm shift of this magnitude demands that little shifts continue to occur. As information about current practices is disseminated, collaboration increases and team building occurs, current programs would be modified by innovations that improve overall function. What works for one child may have disastrous affects on another, or it may work now and cease to be effective later. If staffers refuse to be complacent, have options, remain flexible, be open to new ideas, take risks, and provide mutual support, procedures will continue to create a flow of progress.