[David & Lori DiSanto]

I have a question regarding line therapists.

We are arranging for line therapists for our ABA program, but we really don't know what the going rates are.
What kind of hourly wage are people typically paying in the Vancouver/Burnaby area?

$10/hr? $20/hr?
We really don't have much of an idea. The rates posted on the classifieds area of this board just seem so wildly different at times.

Thanks in advance,
David & Lori

[David & Lori DiSanto]

Hi everyone,

We are starting an ABA program through EAP very soon and we have a question regarding Speech Language Pathologists.

Thus far we have worked only with a SLP through the BC Centre for Ability (she has been wonderful). Unfortunately, our time with her is running out. My question is for those of you who have been running an ABA program for a while… How important has the involvement of a SLP been for your program?
Could you have made it without a SLP?
Is running your ABA program enough?
(our son just turned 3 but is ~2.25 verbally, so he speaks pretty well)
If you have been using a good SLP in the Vancouver/Burnaby area and feel they have been a very helpful accessory to your ABA program then I would love some recommendations on who's good.

We have limited funds and just want to be sure we're spending it very wisely.

With thanks,
Dave & Lori

[David & Lori DiSanto]

I also attended the EAP sponsored conference and just wanted to add my two bits as a new parent to the autism arena.

First of all, the highlight of the conference was clearly Dr. Sallows talk on WEAPs three year success rate for children in their ABA program. To see programs yield terrific success without daily professional monitoring was very impressive. One of the things I thought when I saw Lovaas' results was "can everyone do this for their child? i.e. outside of a clinic" In the WEAP study there were 24 children presented and they achieved similar results to Lovaas'. The important part of this study to me was recognizing the fact that everyone has their own line therapists and their own level of personal talents. Even for many different families and many different line therapists they were able to get good results. This is important because it means that the key piece of the puzzle is the power of the ABA protocol. Success depends on the talents of the person supervising and devising the ABA program and not so much the talents of the people who are actually executing it in the home. For a new parent in this whole thing this is very comforting. It shows that I don't have to be an ABA expert to achieve good success and it shows that the line therapists don't need degrees in psychology to successfully execute a program. Thankfully the key to success lies in the quality of the person guiding the program.
I guess I should qualify that a bit because I understand that all of the line therapists used in Wisconsin are actually WEAP employees (I might be wrong though). Certainly the experience levels of their line therapists will be greater than we'll be able to find here in Vancouver. However, they're not psychology students (as Lovaas used) and I gather are just regular people who have been trained. We have plenty of regular people in Vancouver so I don't see why we can't train them and achieve similar success rates.
So, it appears that a well guided program will likely achieve pretty good results (if you're willing to roll up your sleeves and work). I feel pretty fortunate to be entering the autism community here and now when there's some qualified professionals available to give guidance. I think I must feel a lot more encouraged than some of you who, 10 years ago, were in the same place that I am now.

Now, regarding the second talk (by Mrs. Hamilton) on alternative medical-style interventions. I personally found this talk pretty interesting because I don't know what people are talking about as the "wave of the future". Like most things I'm sure there's a "wave of the future" every year but certainly as a new parent I don't want to be ignorant and just pretend other peoples ideas aren't interesting just because there's no direct data right now. I understand the points made by the people on this board earlier about all of these claims being unsubstantiated. However, unsubstantiated or not I'm interested to hear what's out there. For instance, I'd heard of most of the alternative treatments she listed but had never heard anything about mercury poisoning (remember I'm pretty new). So, now I know more about what's going on in the autism community. Certainly Hg poisoning is an interesting topic and I'm glad I was there to hear something about it. Unfortunately, I think a lot of parents are going to leave there and think "I've just gotta GOTTA get that Hg out of my child". That was the real weakness of her talk I thought… she didn't really indicate how controversial these treatments are.
So, for my take on the second talk… this was an interesting overview of some alternative treatments. Take it as that… an overview of what's "out there". Unfortunately I felt it was presented a little bit like these alternative therapies are the keys to your autistic universe. I'm afraid some people will have unrealistic expectations for these therapies.
So, for us… we're going to give the gfcf diet a shot for four months (we had decided this before the conference). Our son is a good eater and will happily eat gfcf stuff so we've really got nothing to lose.
However, doing a Hg chelation? Not on your life!
For the most part we're going to be taking a pretty deliberate approach to intervention, rather than a shotgun-try everything-somethings got to work- type approach that Mrs. Hamilton seemed to have tried.

One last thing… I lied when I said the highlight of the conference was the WEAP study on ABA results. For me the real #1 highlight happened in the alternative therapies talk and it wasn't about alternative therapies! You see, I've read accounts on improvements in children from ABA and other various therapies. However, this was the first time I've ever seen anything on video. It gave me great joy to watch Mrs. Hamilton's son improve, play with his sister, go to the zoo… just be a kid. Her video was very moving for me.
More than ever I feel like my son has a hope and a future!

David DiSanto
dwd@sfu.ca

[David & Lori DiSanto]

Hi everyone,

I just joined FEAT and this is my first post.
We are looking into treatment options for our son and from the literature I've been looking at an ABA style treatment certainly seems to be the best (it has had a number of well done clinical trials). However, everyone, including Lovaas, keep referring to his initial study with 19 kids. It's so often quoted that 9 "lost their diagnonis as autistic". However, I don't even see Lovaas making any claims like that for any more recent research. In any replication I've seen of Lovaas' work I seem to see that about 50% see very large improvements but I'm not seeing the same level of improvement that Lovaas describes in his original study.
I'm new at this (we discovered there was a problem 1.5 weeks ago) so there's likely some literature I'm missing. Does anyone know if Lovaas' initial result of ~50% ***LOSING THEIR DIAGNOSIS** has been replicated by others or himself.
Secondly, we've already been in contact with EAP (Vancouver's WEAP) and they've been very helpful. It seems that a lot of people here have gone through WEAP. Have you had the same success in the home-based programs through WEAP as has been demonstrated in the literature?

Lastly, is there any correlation between a kids intitial starting point and the outcome of ABA type intervention? I've been told my 2.8 year old son is pretty high functioning (~200 words, listens to instructions, reasonable eye contact with parents etc.) Does that give us a higher chance of success with ABA type programs?

Sorry for the silly questions. We just don't want to wait around… we really want to hit the ground running so are wanting to make decisions quickly. Any info would be much appreciated.

With thanks,
David
dwd@sfu.ca

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