Best Practices

I think it’s funny that she comments on actually interacting with the child when assessing them. This seems like common sense to me especially since that’s how you can get a greater perspective on what’s going on with the child. I like the information she gave on the developmental history. It’s interesting that they are starting to assess autism in children as young as one year old. The presenter showed on one of her slides that towards the child’s first birthday they are developing the not looking at faces or eyes, lack of interest in social games and poor response to name. Researchers are finding out that during the second year of life there are signs of lack of imitation, lack of joint attention behaviors and lack of social interest and social play. In addition researchers are now saying that at the third year of life it’s much clearer that the child is developing autism. The children lack interactive play, have poor language development, they have rituals and stereotyped behaviors and just general delays.

An FBA fits into this assessment picture because it requires the assessor to interact with the child that s/he is assessing. FBA helps describe the behavior that everyone should be looking at and assessing. FBA require input from the parents, the school, clinical setting and anyone who interacts with the child. It helps create a vivid picture of the specific child.

Because these individuals are unable to fully explain why they were displaying certain inappropriate behaviors, methods were developed to determine why they demonstrated such actions. By gathering data and conducting experiments that evaluated the effects of environmental variables on the behavior, concerned staff members could usually decipher the meaning of the behaviors (i.e., what emotion or message was being communicated through the actions), determine why they were occurring, and develop behavior change programs to help the disabled individual display more appropriate behavior in meeting his or her needs.

One way we bridge the gap between clinical assessment, educational assessment, and classroom practice is by having what we call wrap around meetings. These meetings can happen as often as once a month to as little as once every six months. At these meetings the clinical staff that works with the child, the school staff, and families all come together to talk about the progress and positive things that are happening. At the end of the meeting people can list some concerns they have between the end of the meeting and the next one that they all work on and improve upon. The whole point of the meeting is that it is positive and there is no blame. These meetings look at the strengths of the students and it’s a great way to have all services meet and talk about the great things that are happening. These types of meetings should happen all the time everywhere because it helps bridge the gap.