[FEAT BC Admin]

In this topic area, discussion is on all issues relating to setting up and running a home-based intervention program. Please feel free to bring up any problems or suggestions. Parents can help each other greatly by sharing information and giving suggestions.

In addition to parents helping parents, A.B.A. professionals on in the Discussion Group can also help provide insight and guidance.

Topic

[Carolynne Dinesen]

Background checks need to be done in the city you live in.

BackCheck will provide a full police criminal record check in a few days, not a few weeks as the RCMP office will. Same exact service, same exact report. Those 2 weeks waitng can be better spent with therapy for the child.

Thanks. I just wanted to clear that up, if there was any confusion. I didn't want anyone driving to Abbotsford and be sent away. Although it is worth the drive for cheaper gas!! :)

[Deleted User]

I have had about five or six crimiinal record checks done over the years, for both volunteer and paid employment. Here's what I have learned if you go to a police detachment…..
– you have to go to the one in the city/municipality in which you live, unless it's the headquarters
– cost depends on whether it is RCMP or city police
-sometimes, checks for volunteer work are free, whereas paid employment has a fee
– they are never done immediately, and are forwarded to the employer after a few weeks, unless you go to the head detachment in Vancouver, where they will give you signed results immediately (this was for paid employment)

But as far as I know, and have heard, you can't go to a different municipality, but Anon. in Abbotsford, thanks for the kind thought! None of this is written in stone, but just past experience from someone who's had many a record check!

[Deleted User]

Hello
To get a criminal records check I went to the Abbotsford police and they charged me $25.00 and it took less then 5 minutes, BUT I told them I was getting it done for vollunteer work. It is $60.00 for paid work.
Its worth the gas money to drive to Abbotsford and have it done for $25.00 and a little white lie ;)
Ask your local police department what it costs for vollunteer work, and it has never taken 2 weeks as far as I know.

[Carolynne Dinesen]

Guy, (and all those interested in background checks for therapists etc.)

My husband is the president of "BackCheck" (a background checking company in Langley, BC) I asked him how much a background check would be and he said. "If you go to the local RCMP it's about $49 per check." It takes he said about 2 weeks to get the results. His company "BackCheck" charges the same $49 and the report can be done immediately. The forms could probably be faxed to you so you don't need to drag your children to the police office.

He also said he doesn't mind giving
A DISCOUNT FOR THOSE INQUIRIES RELATED TO AUTISM.

I am also a parent of a child with Autism and just got the funding, so I need the same service.

BackCheck (Dave Dinesen President)
(604)506-4663 or tollfree 1-877-308-4663
Ask for Autism related discount!

Please, I hope nobody is offended for my promoting my husband's business. It is related here and I'm just trying to save us Autism parents a few bucks, which I hope you can understand.

Carolynne Dinesen

[Theresa Jouan]

Guy,

Just having finished obtaining a criminal record check (in Abbotsford)- I can tell you that they cost $40 if the position is volunteer and $60 if it is a paid position you are needing the Criminal Record Check for.
Your local police stations are able to process these checks.

[Deleted User]

Hi Guy,

I am a therapist & have had to do a criminal record check before & it's pretty simple. All I had to do was go to my local police station & request to have it done. It costs $25-$30, not sure exactly how much it was but this cost was covered by the family I was working for at the time and if I remember correctly, only took a day.
Hope this helps!!

[Guy Louie]

We are in the process of hiring our Therapists for our ABA program. One of the things we need to do as part of the IEII Funding Option is to have Criminal Record checks on all those we hire.

Having never done such a check before, we're at a loss as to where we should go to get such a check done, what forms we need and how much it costs. We live in North Vancouver.

[Peggy Boon]

I am doing some initial research for a family and wondering if any FEAT families are using Family Centered Practice Group as their consulting firm. I believe the clinic is run by Dr. Gerry Kysela (?spelling). Please respond to
ourhouse@direct.ca

Thanks.

[Susan Adirim]

Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Autism Therapy Is Called Effective, but Rare

This article from NYTimes.com

Autism Therapy Is Called Effective, but Rare

October 22, 2002
By LAURIE TARKAN

No one has found a cure for autism, the neurological
disorder that leads to lifelong impairments in a child's
ability to speak, respond to others, share affection and
learn. But there is a growing consensus that intensive
early intervention is both effective and essential – the
sooner after diagnosis, the better.

Early intervention, which involves many hours of therapy
with one or more specialists, does not help every autistic
child to the same degree. It is best started no later than
age 2 or 3, and for reasons that are unclear, it does not
help some children at all. But for those who are helped,
their parents say, the changes are miraculous.

Yet the success of early intervention is posing a painful
predicament for schools and families – a predicament made
more immediate by a rising tide of diagnoses of autism.
Last week, researchers reported that the number of
austistic children in California had risen more than
sixfold since 1987, and other states and the federal
government have also noted sharp increases.

By federal law, public schools must provide appropriate
education for children with disabilities, starting at age
3. But the treatment is so expensive – averaging $33,000 a
year, according to research published in the journal
Behavioral Intervention – that many families cannot
persuade their school districts to pay for it.

Brian and Juliana Jaynes of Newport News, Va., can testify
to that. As a baby, their son, Stefan, developed normally,
if not ahead of the curve. By age 2, his vocabulary was
well over 100 words. He knew his address and his colors,
and he spoke in short sentences. But soon after his second
birthday, he started to regress, forgetting the words he
once knew.

His parents suspected a neurological disorder. A specialist
confirmed their suspicions, telling them Stefan was
severely autistic and urging them to get intensive therapy
for him.

Instead, school officials placed Stefan in a
special-education preschool, where, the Jayneses say, he
rapidly regressed. (The school district says the placement
was appropriate.) After the neurologist told the frantic
couple that their son might have to be institutionalized,
they removed him from the preschool and began 40 hours a
week of behavior therapy at home.

It cost them more than $100,000 over three years. Today,
Stefan, 11, attends a school for autistic children and has
vastly improved his language, social and self-help skills.
He can say some simple sentences and communicate his needs;
perhaps most important, he spends more and more time
interacting with his family, and less time in his own
world. The behavior therapy, his father said, "has brought
about an awakening in this little boy's personality that is
truly a miracle."

In recent years, four leading institutions – the American
Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, the Surgeon General and the National
Academy of Sciences – have called for early intervention,
including one-on-one therapy, for children with autism. A
panel of experts convened by the academy last year
recommended a minimum of 25 hours a week, 12 months a year.

But Dr. Catherine Lord, the panel's chairwoman and a
psychology professor at the University of Michigan,
estimates that fewer than 10 percent of children with
autism are getting the recommended level of therapy.
"Almost everywhere, schools will say kids are getting
services," she said. "But what they're getting varies
enormously."

Because the young nervous system has a great deal of
plasticity, many experts believe that early intervention
enriches neural growth.

Dr. David L. Holmes, president of the Eden Institute, an
autism center in Princeton, said, "If you have a child with
autism who's not wired correctly, and we allow that to
continue without intervention, those neuropathways will
become fixed, and it becomes far more difficult to undo
that tangled mess."

Autistic children lose the ability to learn by observation,
something other children do constantly. Behavioral therapy
is aimed at teaching these children how to learn. Teaching
an autistic child to wave goodbye, for instance, can take
40 hours of repetitive lessons.

There are several kinds of therapy. The most popular – the
one Stefan Jaynes receives – is applied behavioral
analysis, in which a therapist asks a child to perform
small tasks and then offers feedback to reinforce correct
responses.

Other programs use sensory integration therapy, based on
the theory that autistic children have defects in
processing the messages from their five senses; auditory
integration therapy, which assumes that some are
oversensitive or undersensitive to sound or have problems
processing sounds; speech therapy; and group programs.

The federal education law leaves decisions about therapy to
professionals and parents. But administrators say parents
often demand far more therapy than the experts recommend.
"Is the school system going to override teachers, and
substitute the teacher's decision with the parent's
decision?" asked Bruce Hunter, associate executive director
for public policy at the American Association of School
Administrators in Arlington, Va.

The biggest obstacle is budgetary. "When you're looking at
limited resources in a school district, sometimes the
available resources drive what services schools will
propose to offer," said David Egnor, policy director at the
Council for Exceptional Children. "It's simply pragmatic."

Mr. Hunter added: "The problem all along in special ed is
that you have a chronic shortage of money that is
exacerbated by downturns in the economy, which is when it
really gets bad. You get the joy of taking the money from
one group of children and spending it on another group."

Under law, the federal government may reimburse states up
to 40 percent of the extra cost of educating a child with a
disability. But this year, Congress is paying just 17
percent, or $7.5 billion. President Bush has proposed
adding $1 billion next year.

"The federal and state governments ought to pay attention
to these children who have disabilities and need to be
educated and need special treatment, and that costs money,"
said Representative Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana, who
has an autistic grandson.

But the chairman of the House Committee on Education and
the Workforce, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, opposes
full financing of the act until major changes are made. He
and others have called for reforms in identifying students
with disabilities – minority students are classified far
out of proportion to their numbers – and in the daunting
paperwork for the schools.

Many experts believe society would pay less in the long run
if children received appropriate early intervention. An
article in Behavioral Intervention in 1998 found that if
100 children were given early intensive intervention and 40
of them had only partial improvement, the public would save
$9.5 million over their school years, ages 3 to 22.

Most insurance companies do not pay for therapy for
developmental disorders like autism, though a few companies
offer reimbursement as part of their health benefits.

Another obstacle to treatment is a lack of specialists.
Public schools have a shortage of more than 12,000 special
education teachers, and the number is expected to grow as
many teachers retire or leave the field.

Advocates say the supply of teachers trained to deal with
autism is even shorter, so schools are forced to rely on
expensive outside specialists.

Even parents who decide to pay for treatment have trouble
finding private specialists. Autism schools and private
behavioral therapists typically have waiting lists of more
than a year. This forces parents to set up their own
in-home school and hire teams of people to provide the 20
to 40 hours a week of therapy. Many parents train
themselves in the behavioral therapies, and then train
college students, whom they can hire for considerably less
money than specialists.

Yet another obstacle to early intervention is delayed
diagnosis. Autism is most commonly diagnosed at 20 to 36
months, but experts say the signs often surface earlier.
Many families experience delays because pediatricians often
dismiss their concerns.

The growing awareness of autism may ease that problem.
(Autism is now diagnosed in 1 out of 600 children, by most
estimates.) But without appropriate therapy, early
diagnosis does little but create frustration for parents,
as Stefan's mother, Juliana Jaynes, recalled recently. "I
had the doctor telling me that every moment counts," she
said. "There's that horrible feeling of time slipping away
and nothing being done."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/22/health/children/22AUTI.html?ex=1036255532&ei=1&en=07d0fd4c840e9437

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help@nytimes.com.

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

[Deleted User]

Hi Andrea,

There are few different options for the parent. The ABLE clinic in Surrey and EAP in Burnaby BC can help with the diagnosis.
Able clinic is 604 584 3450

EAP number is Burnaby, sorry I don't have it.

I agree that many well meaning doctors either misdiagnose or refuse to diagnose the child to spare the family. Well, I can say this that earlier treatment is the best. My son was also diagnosed over the toddler years and although we are in the process of Lovaas it makes it more difficult then if he were a toddler to begin therapy.

One thing your right parents SHOULD NOT feel quilty or blame themselves for the any diagnosis over the age of 3. Personally speaking I can say that.

[Author]

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