Home Forums TEACCH DISCUSSION FORUM Peer -reviewed research on the efficacy of TEACCH Re: Peer -reviewed research on the efficacy of TEACCH

Anonymous
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Jayne,

Of course I can’t say anything about how you and your colleagues work,as I haven’t seen this. I was thinking of the NAS “franchised” Early Bird course. We parents all gave good feedback at the time – you don’t want to do anything else with someone who’s visited you at home a few times. But several years down the line I think the course was useless, except in that we got to meet other parents. I met one of them recently and her current verdict on Early Bird was that it was “a complete waste of time”.Its value was really that the LEA and the NHS could claim they were providing early intervention. I think it would be lying to describe the Early Bird in this way.

However I do note that this web site appears to advocate that TEACCH and only TEACCH to be used in Northampton. This has to be wrong. (See my posts above re Pat Howlin’s comments.)One approach does not fit all.

LEAs claim to be using TEACCH. Usually it is as I have described in my son’s school. It is exceptional for anything further to be offered. TEACCH is not offered in the home and I personally wouldn’t want it, any way. My son needs to be TAUGHT not just managed. He has disabilities. Autism is not a culture, it is a collection of behaviours caused by a variety of neuro-developmental problems. To say it is a culture is total tripe: yet that is what Division TEACCH asserts. I remember when the school first told me they used TEACCH I thought great, what are they going to teach him! Eventually I realised it was nothing. By the way the legal duty to educate lies with the LEA and not with the parents. The LEA should be providing the education and not expecting parents to do this work for them.

Any ABA programme should be designed and frequently monitored and supervised by a qualified BCABA. Tutors are not just recruited and left to get on with it. The programme is very specific, the targets are very specific, the way of working is very specific and the tutors are taught to implement all these. It may be that the family you know simply can’t afford to do the job properly. The LEA ought to pay, but getting them to do so is a long and difficult and expensive process.

Schools recruit learning support assistants who do almost all the teaching of children with autism. Yet commonly these assistants have little or even no training (apart from Health and Safety and Positive Handling).