Parent Involvement as a Metric of Quality Care

A family-centered approach has been considered best practice for many years in early intervention and pediatric rehabilitation (Bailey, Buysse, Edmondson, 1992; Baird & Peterson, 1997). For students with complex medical, physical, developmental, and behavioral challenges, a family-centered...

The Role of Compassion in Professional ABA Services Relationships

“Phenomenology or phenomenological psychology, a sub-discipline of psychology, is the scientific study of subjective experiences. It is an approach to psychological subject matter that attempts to explain experiences from the point of view of the subject via the analysis of their written or...

The Power and Potential of the IEP

To address the inequity of limiting special needs children from obtaining an appropriate public education, the Individualized Education Program (IEP) was implemented in 1975 across the United States school systems. The IEP is an educational road map for children with disabilities. It is required by...

Engaging and Supporting Parents of Children Recently Diagnosed with Autism

No parent wants to learn that their child is autistic. Hopes and dreams for a neurotypical child are mostly abandoned and replaced by fear, uncertainty and, often, despair. Thus, effective professional intervention must begin with active listening to grasp the parent perspective on their child’s...

Providing Primary Behavior Health Care Services to Autistic Clients: Is This an Exception or the New Rule for ABA Organizations?

It is well known, but not fully appreciated, that an ASD diagnosis triggers a tsunami of emotions within the family of the autistic individual. Many established ABA provider groups have realized that the needs of parents and siblings of ASD individuals should be tended to via an interdisciplinary...

An Interdisciplinary Model for Supporting Children with Autism and Their Families

An autistic child’s family is structured no different than that of neurotypical children. Families generally include parents and siblings with their own perspectives and issues. In the wake of substantial empirical support for the effectiveness of applied behavior analysis (ABA) interventions for...

Utilizing Digital Media to Enable Continuity of Autism Services

For over a decade there has been an abundance of professional articles and seminars on the potential of telehealth and distance learning services. Outside of the medical world, the movement of state licensing bodies and insurance payers to permit use of telehealth services by licensed behavioral...

A Community of Caring Agencies Unites to Support Families in Camden County, NJ

First Children Services and the Rowan Integrated Special Needs (RISN) Center are organizations that specialize in providing clinical services to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in New Jersey. Many of the youth who these agencies serve are eligible for or already...

Comprehensive Programming to Support Children with Developmental Disabilities and Significant Medical Conditions in a School Setting

Supporting children with autism or other developmental disabilities and significant co-occurring medical conditions presents substantial challenges to teachers, parents and all involved caretakers. This article presents an overview of the interdisciplinary model and a representative case study...