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A New Opportunity
Why do children with Autism need ABA?
Proven high outcome levels
Empirical evidence has proven that an ABA programme allows 47% of children with Autism to acquire sufficient social, emotional, academic and language skills to be independently integrated into a mainstream school.
Long term studies show that these skills are maintained into teenage and adult years to allow independent living.
Immediate benefits
As the term 'early intervention' suggests, the age of the child at commencement of an ABA programme is a contributing factor in their eventual outcome. It is crucial that intervention should be effective, appropriate and most crucially, early. Research has shown that intervention should take place ideally before the age of 3 years, 6 months, to achieve the best outcomes.
The existing services have a long waiting period for placement into their therapy centre. As diagnosis is rarely made before 18 months of age, children are generally beyond the optimum commencement age when they do finally access existing services at age three at the earliest. Even when children with Autism access the services at three years of age, generally the contact time in these programmes is insufficient to enable a child to respond adequately to the techniques employed.
By contrast, an ABA programme can be implemented immediately a diagnosis is made as it is home-based. Therefore, a child will have made huge gains and be nearing completion of the ABA programme before they might otherwise only be starting a permanent placement in the existing services.
Long term benefits
Given the success rates of ABA programmes, the Government has the potential to save millions of dollars in funding over the lifetime of a child with Autism. The community will also benefit from these savings, as children rarely need to be institutionalised, and many will gain independence.
The family of a child with Autism will benefit from the integration of the child into the normal family setting, significantly reducing the stress related when not able to do this. But let's not forget the obvious benefits to the children themselves. ABA programmes allow them the chance to reach their potential, a chance they might be denied otherwise.
Who would benefit from such therapy?
It is the hope of ABIQ that an ABA programme will be available to all children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and related disorders.
Next: Ben's story >
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