[FEAT BC Admin]

This area is for discussions in general topics.

Topic

[Vasylyna Bohun]

Hi everybody,

I was just wondering if anyone here had an experience with Pivot Point and Little Steps agencies centered in Victoria. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Please email me in private at cryo078@gmail.com

Thanks,

Vasylyna

[Sabrina Freeman]

Autism Treatment Insurance in B.C.s neighbor to the South (Washington State) Makes Huge Progress

I wonder if there is any way to use this info. in B.C.?

http://www.autismpundit.com/files/d0a5a05efa15fcafb93b39ef249bce6d-136.html

Feel free to share with your social networks!

[Sabrina Freeman]

Has Autism Speaks gone over to the dark side?

http://www.autismpundit.com/files/9cf382d66084ba8e2a6236900ca89e5d-135.html

Please share with your social networks! Let's keep Autism Speaks accountable…

[Vasylyna Bohun]

Hello everyone,

our son was recently diagnosed with PDD-NOS and we are currently in the process of setting up an intervention team for him. We would greatly appreciate if anyone could provide any feedback about behaviour consultants in Victoria, BC. Please email me in private at cryo078@gmail.com

[Julie Ng]

###Warning – This is a long message so you might want to sit down with a coffee or tea in your hand first. For the new parents who need/want to know how others are doing……

Alex Was Robbed?

Well, he wasn’t physically robbed it was just a figure of speech and a way to capture your attention. But before I get to the point of my title I wanted to start by commenting on a post David Chan wrote a few months ago regarding the blind contestant on Master Chef.

David, I saw the same season opener however the only thing that went through my mind when I saw the blind contestant was, “Somebody’s going to lose some fingers for higher ratings.” But, David is a very astute person and has that clear vision whereas I can only see flying body parts he see’s life’s little lessons.

We met David about 11 years ago at one of the FEAT BC meetings for WEAP where he said to us “Beg, borrow or steal, you have to get your son Lovaas ABA treatment….” Those words were more or less exactly what he said and we got his (and FEAT’s) point. We internalized it ourselves and came up with this motto “We either pay now or we will pay for the rest of ours and our children’s lives.”

With that motto in mind when we started on the Lovaas ABA road, we “begged” MCFD for help, we “borrowed” from our life savings and the stole part – I’m driving a Forest Green 1998 Ford Windstar – not the sleek Mercedes or BMW we had envisioned. The overall treatment regimen and mathematics of Lovaas ABA was a comfort to us, if you get all the right people lined up and followed the prescribed amounts of hours, a certain percentage would “recover.” Our treatment plan would always aim for 40 hours a week before Alex started school and as many hours as we could fit in when he started kindergarten. With unexpected activities, severe colds, flu’s, and holidays, by both us and the team we averaged about 30-35 hours pre-elementary and about 15-20 hours a week when he started school (there are boxes & boxes of data in the closets but we not going through all of it to get the exact numbers.)

Point #1 – Get as many Lovaas ABA hours in before school starts and after your child begins school.

When Alex started Kindergarten we could see that he was nowhere near the level of functioning compared to his peers but his teacher Ms Bird was awesome to work with and we had her for 2 years in a row. She had a very inclusive approach to everything, nurtured the children to be tolerant of one another and provided feedback to us. Her classroom motto was “be helpful not hurtful”, she was a singer and had catchy songs for her kids to learn the alphabet. Although she did not do Lovaas ABA in the classroom, Alex was getting the social component we could not offer at home. This provided us a good foundational start at school and allowed us to work on building those required academic, emotional and social skills his at home.

Point #2 – Advocate for your child like you have never advocated before. Not all principal and teachers are they same. You have to get buy in from the principal down so they can find you the right fitting (teacher) classroom for your child and supply the correct resources.

In Grade 2 it started going downhill from there. We would start the year off by asking for ABA trained aides, full time support, more/better school to home communication, extra help for Alex and end up with, part time untrained support, basically blank grades on the report cards and meaningless IEP’s which went nowhere. Don’t get us wrong the people that worked with Alex at school were wonderful people but we felt that he was not getting the help he really need to reach his full potential. So at the end of every year we would see that there would be this long list of academic issues which we were never informed of during the school year. And as Alex progress through the grades we saw the Predicted Learning Outcomes (PLO) gap widen between him and his peers. We had hoped that that process would self correct when he made the transition from the small elementary annex (Grades K-3) to the larger main school (Grades K – 7) but the main school principal still could not see our point. The feeling we got from them was, ”Yes your child has Autism so just be happy that he walks, talks and can read a little – what more do you want from us.” We could see that he was being bullied at school, his motivation to go to school was low to none, but he was still hanging in there and made some friends. I haven’t really explained this but every IEP meeting I would go in with our consultant and we would tell the school our goals for the year were, that the academic goals were to be adaptive not modified and convey to them our over arching plan of Alex graduating with a Dogwood and going on to University. So you can understand why we would go ballistic at the end of every year when the school fails to live up to whatever they are suppose to do and we have to do ABA boot camp in the summer.

Point #3 – IEP’s are super important. Make sure you plan ahead with your billion goals for the year. Get buy in from the principal down to monitor the IEP and update as frequently as humanly possible. Daily, weekly, monthly, it doesn’t matter as long the teacher/SSW does it and your child is making positive progress.

All problems comes to a boil when you see no resolution year after year and when we look back at our issues it should not have taken us so long to reach that point but we are nice people – we let things slide. We don’t like to be confrontational because we know that it could back fire and hurt our child’s school life. We like to create “mutual consensus” – what is in the best interest of the child so the people involved feel that they are part of the solution. We believe most of the teachers we worked with during those middle grades felted that we were overbearing parents who pushed their autistic child way too hard and that sentiment is really a direction from the top (principal) down. It’s the old he walks, he talks line. Near the middle to end of grade 5 we had a complete blow out where we wrote a letter to the Vancouver School superintendent listing our long list of grievance’s asking for an audience to explain our impasse with how our child is being unfairly treated at school.

Point #4 – Do it now. Don’t wait until years have passed to advocate above for your child’s right to learn if the school is not playing ball. Don’t make it a person vendetta be clinical. This is nothing personal, it is all academic.

We were passed on to the assistant superintendent for our zone at the time and we definitely felt that the Auton and Hewko cases were on their minds when were discussing our situation at school. Over the course of a few weeks/months the VSB came to the conclusion that the impasse with our school principal could not be easily resolved, the team work/communication was not there, and our consultant could not do what she needed to do to be effective for Alex. Their suggestion was to move him to a different school the following year. One where the principal listened, the staff heard and we could communicate freely with the people involved in his education. Grades 6 and 7 for Alex were really positive times in his life; with both sides working together and we saw huge strides in his academic achievements, social progress and overall attitude towards school. But when the report cards came home it was still difficult for us to believe the glowing marks he was receiving since were conditioned to low academic expectations. We had doubts because we were “complainer” parents. Was his report card being sugar coated for the sake of expediency or were they genuine marks?

Point #5 – Validate the results by reviewing your child’s school work with the teacher(s).

This year Alex just completed Grade 8 in one of the Vancouver School Board’s ARC program (Autism Resource Center) attending “HT” academic courses (regular stream classes with extra heap) and one of our main IEP goals was for Alex to maintain a B average but since the teachers were on strike it was difficult to determine with 7 different teachers. We didn’t expect him to achieve a B average but we like to aim high and provide encouragement. If you haven’t figured it out by now we will spell it out, Alex is not learning via ABA anymore he’s been learning like all the other kids in his classes but with extra help. We don’t remember exactly when this change happened it was kind gradual – we think?

Throughout the year we heard glowing reports from all of his teachers so we knew he was flourishing and doing very well. Math which was his worst subject since Kindergarten improved to a point where the teacher stopped following the HT program and gave him regular Math 8 exams (next year he’s moving onto regular Math 9.)

What we saw on the report cards reflected his high level of achievement and this really validated the work previously done in grade 6 & 7 – it would be impossible for seven teachers to pad the numbers for the sake of expediency. We calculated his GPA at the end of the year and he received a GPA of 2.83 to 2.88 for his final grade (final grade versus individual term percentage). He would have made it to a GPA of 3.0 if it was not for a final mark of C+ for Socials 8 HT.

Scrutinizing his report card we saw that Alex maintained a B in Term1, Term 2 and Term 3 for Socials how could he have ended up with a C+ for his final grade. Being “complainer parents” we emailed the teacher to inquire and the answer was that he got a C (65) for his socials final exam mark which brought him down to a C+ for the year.

Alex got rob!!!

Point #6: It is not all about the numbers, is it? It’s about learning, growing and being the best individual he can be and that is a mission Alex has glowingly accomplished for grade 8.

We haven’t really detailed what a well rounded child he is because it is not just the academics he has a ton of other activities he excels at. He won the Canadian nationals for his level in Special Olympics Figure Skating, in grade 7 his school team won the VSB Basketball Championship (with videos of him scoring), he was #1 backbencher on the school tennis team, a member of the school anime & sci fi clubs and he hates piano but still does it.

So…” Thank You Team Alex Past and Present” – you know who you are. It’s all those little small slices of time that you have worked with him in the past, building up, to create this moment. For those who don’t know who was/is part of Team Alex – ask around and like the Kevin Bacon game I’m sure there is a connection there.

We are really excited and want to share with you about his summer activities but this message is already too long. Maybe we’ll do our next installment in Sept.

Regards

Joachim and Julie

[Mike & Jean]

Long-time Vancouver paediatrician, Dr. Melvin DeLevie's interview is now featured in Episode 3 of Medicare for Autism Now's web-series – Medicare's Orphans.

Dr. DeLevie has extensive experience dealing with children with autism. He is well known to many BC families for his tireless work on behalf of their children. His 20 minute interview is a powerful indictment of Canada's archaic approach to the treatment of autism which is in stark contrast to the treatment of children with any other disease or disorder. He gives examples of why social services personnel are ill-equipped to deal with what is in-fact a medical condition. He eloquently expresses his frustration with the "people in charge" who are both "blind and deaf" toward what he terms the "lost children".

To watch his interview, go to: http://www.medicareforautismnow.org and click on episode 3 Watch it, share it, forward it to your local MLA and MP. ACT NOW!

[Mike & Jean]

Go to http://www.medicareforautismnow.org to watch Harold Doherty's featured interview. Watch, learn,share and ACT!

[Hwei Siasc]

Hi everybody,

One of my questions in my email to the agency:

"The Speech Language Pathologist (SLP), [SLP's name] told us that she can't teach Warrick articulation and speech sounds, could she please give us her reasons again as detailed as possible?"

and this is the reply:

[SLP's name]’s role in this program is that of a consultant. This means she provides programing for the BI to carry out every day not direct intervention like articulation and speech sounds. [SLP's name] cannot provide programming for the BI for speech because Warrick distorts speech sounds.That means that the person doing speech related intervention with him needs to be able to hear and identify these distortions every day as the intervention is done.BI’s and other paraprofessionals do not have this training.Only an SLP does. Our ABA SLP’s do not provide this type of direct intervention (see attached document which states that the SLP’s role is to provide, monitor and consult to the team)."

Is there any parent here who has children who distorts speech sounds like my son (car prounouced as "ca", shovel as "shobel" etc)? Who is carrying practice/intervention session with your children? Behavior Consultant, BI or SLP or someone else?

Your reply is appreciated.

Thanks,
Hwei

[Mike & Jean]

"There were a pretty hard-core group of parents who wouldn't take NO for an answer…." quote from Harold Doherty's feature length interview from "Medicare's Orphans" documentary. In his 24 minute interview, experienced and accomplished advocate from New Brunswick, Harold Doherty discusses the power and essential need for effective parent advocacy. Author of "Facing Autism in New Brunswick" blog, Harold describes how "parents should not expect governments to take action unless they are pushed to take action…" Also included is Harold's well-founded critique of the neurodiversity movement.Harold's interview is the second episode of Medicare for Autism Now's web series.

Go to http://www.medicareforautismnow.org to watch Harold's interview and "Medicare's Orphans" documentary. Share it with your friends, host a screening party, order a DVD. Go to the "agenda for action" page and learn how to engage your MLA and MP. Need more help? Put together a group and contact us about an advocacy workshop.
"By anyone's measure, we have an autism crisis in Canada…it's time to get off your butts and do something.."….indeed it is!

[Hwei Siasc]

Hi everyone,

Can a behaviour interventionist develop and write a Behavior Plan of Intervention for children under six if she is supervised by a behaviour consultant on RASP? According to the following information, I don't think so.

Autism Manual for BC Page 2-17 on ACT Community Training's website:

Please be aware that only behavior consultants on the RASP are eligible to write a Behavior Plan of Intervention for children under six.

A Parent's Handbook:Your Guide to Autism Programs Page 9:

Your child's intervention program must be based on a plan that takes into account his or her unique strengths and needs. This Behavioural Plan of Intervention (BPI) is written by a behaviour consultant, with input from family members and other intervention team members, such as the speech language pathologist, occupational therapist, physiotherapist, and/or behaviour intervetnionist(s).

The behaviour consultant you use to develop and monitor your child's BPI must be selected from the Registry of Autism Service Providers (RASP).

I am confused. Anyone here can enlighten me?

Thanks,
Hwei

[Author]

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