Many states are considering making significant cuts to the amount of money they spend on therapy/intervention for children and teens with developmental disabilities or mental health diagnoses.
There is a cost effective way to help children and families; however, it requires parental responsibility. Some have argued that some families can’t be active participants in their children’s therapy. That argument is bogus and has been proven false by research. Almost ANY family can actively participate in their child’s therapy/intervention.
For children with Autism, one solution is P.L.A.Y. therapy. http://www.playproject.org/media/pdfs/PilotStudy_PLAYProject.pdf
The cost per child is approximately $2,500.00 per year as of 2008. Another option is Coaching.
P.L.A.Y. is a form of coaching; however, there are many forms of coaching in therapy and intervention.
While most of the research revolves around early childhood, there is supportive literature for this practice with older children, teens, and even adults. In fact, if you go to the bottom of: http://responsiblepracticalparenting.blogspot.com/ and use the Google Parenting and Google Scholar search engines, using key words such as: coaching, intervention, early, childhood, teens, therapy, you will find a wealth of information and research.
If you are currently spending $25,000.00 to $100,000.00 per year per child and getting poor results, consider coaching through one of the established research based models. Typically for $10,000.00 per year per child or less, you can actually get better results.
As mentioned, there are other ways of doing coaching; but the bottom line is, it is significantly more effective and significantly less expensive.
Full family centered involvement with contextualized routine based interventions in the environments natural to the child and family is the most effective way to significantly improve behaviors in the home and other natural environments and make significant progress based on the natural routines of the child and family.
If your state, school, or government entity is considering significant cut-backs in services, encourage those who make these decisions to consider a coaching model.
If we do not do something effective, the unintended consequences are going to be even more expensive.
Supplemental Materials:
http://www.coachinginearlychildhood.org/nleconcepts.php
http://www2.ku.edu/~kskits/ta/Packets/UsingPrimaryService/References.pdf
http://www.fippcase.org/caseinpoint/caseinpoint_vol4_no1.pdf
http://www.fippcase.org/
See: http://qualitytreatmentforchildren.blogspot.com/ & http://currentautismresearchhopeforautism.blogspot.com/ for additional information.
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