APPROACH
Our individualized ABA program aims to not only help your child improve their developmental skills and help decrease challenging behaviours, but just as importantly to create a partnership with parents and caregivers in order to provide the best possible treatment package. Viewing parents as an integral part of your child's treatment program, we have increased opportunities to provide more effective and efficient progress, as well as provide parents with the tools, strategies and confidence to embed their child's goals into their everyday routines. Our goal is to provide families with a holistic treatment program that targets not only your child's needs, but also the needs of parents and those individuals important in your child's life, including other family members, educators, teachers, coaches, and other influential members of your community.
Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is an intervention framework that uses behaviour science to teach new skills, increase socially significant behaviours, and decrease problem behaviours. ABA can focus on any number of developmental domains including communication, social and play skills, academics, and self-help skills. With the rapid increase in individuals diagnosed with autism, the approach is most often used with this population, however, it is an effective tool for children and adults with various behavioural and learning difficulties.
An ABA program can be a comprehensive intervention which can be carried out in any of your child's natural settings, including home, daycare, etc. With a focus on parent and caregiver involvement, the primary focus of Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT) utilizes a child-based individualized program in an efficient and cost-effective manner, in order to reach the maximum potential of treatment gains and generalization of skills.
For older children, teens and adults, Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) is utilized to target problem areas including anxiety, unwanted thoughts and behaviours, and issues around self-esteem and depression. Originally developed by Dr. Steven Hayes, the ACT approach utilizes the "hexaflex" framework of building six important skills to improve psychological flexibility in the context of the individual's presenting problems. It has been described by some as a combination of mindfulness and behavior analysis with a growing evidence base. For more on ACT, visit https://contextualscience.org/act#
What is Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT)?
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Our ABA program emphasizes the use of Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT). This modern, naturalistic ABA delivery method was developed by Drs. Robert Koegel and Lynn Kern Koegel at the University of California at Santa Barbara, as well as Dr. Laura Schreibman at the University of California at San Diego. PRT is based on the principles of ABA and has grown internationally. It is one of the few recognized and recommended models for children with ASD and their families.
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PRT uses a naturalistic method of teaching which focuses on pivotal behaviours. Changes in these pivotal behaviours result in widespread gains in communication, social and several other behavioural domains including (but not limited to) motivation, responsivity to multiple cues, self-management and initiations. This occurs in everyday routines and interactions as well as across varied settings.
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The underlying strategies of PRT are incorporated throughout interventions as often as possible. These include child choice, task variation, interspersing maintenances tasks, rewarding attempts as well as the use of natural reinforcers.
For more information and current research, visit the website of the Stanford Autism Center.