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Tero Toivanen

Finding Perspective as an Autism Parent: First, Put on Your Own Breathing Mask - 0 views

  • Emergency professionals are taught that the first person they must ensure is safe from harm at the scene of an emergency is themselves for the simple reason that if they are injured they are no longer in a position to help anyone else. The same holds true for parents for if they don’t protect their own wellbeing and collapse from the strain emotionally or if they drive themselves into financial ruin, they are no longer in a position to help their children with autism or to help their children who do not have autism.
  • Ever the most heroic emergency worker can be confronted by their personal limitations and, to be a good emergency worker, they must accept them so that “all is not lost” in the process of “trying to save everything.” For our families to survive, we parents of children with autism must also be realistic when facing our own personal limitations. No one else can face them for us.
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    Finding Perspective as an Autism Parent: First, Put on Your Own Breathing Mask
Tero Toivanen

BMSO Training Manuals - 0 views

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    Training manuals cover a wide range of behavioral strategies, including Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT), Priming, Understanding Problem Behaviors, Self-Management, Parent-Professional Collaboration, and Toilet Training.
Tero Toivanen

Patrick Ecker: AAC - 2 views

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    This site is intended to be an active community for sharing graphics, pictures, and visual supports for children with disabilities. Parents, professionals, and others can share their ideas and help children learn to use language and communicate the best they can.
Tero Toivanen

Facilitated Communication - 0 views

  • Facilitators who work closely with individuals with autism, as well as other developmental disabilities (e.g., mental retardation, cerebral palsy, etc.) report that individuals with little or no language are fully expressive about life experiences, thoughts, feelings, choices, preferences, and decisions, when allowed to communicate through facilitation.
  • Biklen and other proponents of facilitated communication have been strongly opposed to objective, empirical validity testing. They maintain that testing undermines the individual's confidence, places him or her under pressure, and introduces negativism that destroys the communicative exchange.
  • Rather, under the surface of autism is a person with full cognitive faculties. Smith and Belcher (1993) indicate that much of this suggests a basic unwillingness on the part of families, professionals, and caregivers to accept the individuals with disabilities for what they are, thus diminishing the value of the individual in a way that the disability itself could not have.
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  • Thompson (1993) describes facilitated communication as a classic example of the self-fulfilling prophecy. The facilitator wants to believe that the person with a severe cognitive and language disability is actually of normal to superior intellectual ability. Parents especially want to believe that a way has been found to finally unlock the door to their real son or daughter.
  • In short, people want facilitated communication to work.
  • Advocates of facilitated communication often respond to naysayers, "It can't hurt to try it." Biklen agrees, "It is not harmful to teach people to communicate through pointing." However, he qualifies his claim with the caveat that "it can be harmful if the facilitator over interprets, does not monitor the person's eyes, facilitates when the person is looking away, is not sensitive to the possibility of guiding the person, and asks leading rather than clarifying questions."
  • Some argue that "false communication" may distort beliefs, understanding, and rehabilitative approaches to persons with autism and other developmental disabilities.
  • Additionally, facilitated communication in the past few years has been the source of many contested abuse allegations, usually allegedly reported by an individual with very limited unassisted communication skills against a family caregiver or caregivers.
  • There are at least 50 legal cases in the U.S. involving allegations of sexual abuse produced through facilitated communication (Berger, 1994). Several such cases have already occurred in Australia, and some have arisen in Europe (Green, 1992).
  • With the exception of three empirical studies (Intellectual Disability Review Panel, 1989; Calculator and Singer, 1992; and Velazquez (in press)) which provide preliminary validation of facilitated communication, most of the support for the validity of facilitated communication is based on anecdotal reports.
  • Unfortunately, validity questions surround anecdotal reports of facilitated communication. In general, these reports lack the controls necessary to rule out experimenter biases, reliability concerns, and threats to validity (Cummins and Prior, 1992; Jacobsen, Eberlin, Mulick, Schwartz, Szempruch, and Wheeler, 1994).
  • Although Biklen (1990) admits that facilitator influence is a real possibility, facilitated communications are typically reported as though they are the words of the person with a disability.
  • Without exception, these empirical studies have questioned the authenticity of the communication as truly coming from the individual versus the facilitator.
  • Interdisciplinary Party Report (1988) and the Intellectual Disability Review Panel (1989) both of which examined the source of facilitated communications produced by persons in Australia, and found strong evidence that responses obtained through facilitation were influenced by the facilitator.
  • Gina Green, Director of Research for the New England Center for Autism and Associate Scientist for the E.K. Shriver Center for Mental Retardation, Inc., has reviewed over 150 cases where empirical testing was performed and cites 15 independent conduct evaluations involving 136 individuals with autism and/or mental retardatiion who were alleged to have been taught to communicate via facilitated communication. In none of the cases were investigators able to confirm facilitated communication by the 136 individuals.
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    Facilitated Communication by Natalie Russo [First Published in Quality of Care Newsletter, Issue62, January-February 1995]
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