Intervention for Autistic Student - Research Proposal Example

04.12 Intervention Proposal for Autistic Assessment of the case Autism is a neural growth disorder which is associated with significant impairment in social and communication development (Geschwind, 2008). An autistic child shows little interest in social and learning activities. The disease mostly affects the mind, attention and perception of an individual. Autistic patients cannot be distinguished by a single symptom, but with a ray of symptoms which vary from mild to severe. In this case, attention should be sought whenever these symptoms are detected. An early intervention to autism may be of help as the patient may recover normally if proper measures are taken immediately. Professional help and the advice given and taken into account are necessary (Geschwind, 2008). In our case, it is a 10-years old autistic female student who has low functioning brain and non-verbal communication. The student is the only child and lives with her single mother who has single handedly raised her. The student has a familial deafness from her father’s side as her file indicated. The father of the student is Latino while her mother is not. The student has been sent to 504 School on the request of the District of New York. The student only verbalizes “no” or “momma”, and the student is not trained on how to use a potty. In addition, the student has an aid with her all the time. In terms of class activity, the child is known to scribble on a page and to tear it up afterwards.The student has the problem of putting any object into her mouth all times and hitting other children at times. She does this mainly to get the children’s attention. Client’s strength and abilities Children with autism exhibit a wide variety of intellectual capabilities, from intense mental deficiency to higher intelligence. It is considered that fewer than 30 % of autistic persons have intelligence in the usual range. Several autistic persons show outstanding talents in spite of handy disability in common. Along with the complexities autism can bring personal strong point alongside with special skills. Some of these are math skills, strong memory skills, musical abilities, three dimensional thinking, and intensely focus on an interest. The student is able to get medical intervention. With the necessary help, the student will be able to learn. She has musical abilities as she can hum some songs, and shows interest in music. The student can be said to have splinter skills or islet as she seems to run when left to walk alone. People with autism may show various skills in an abnormal way. Mitigating Factors or Stressors which can Contribute to the Problem Factors like increased awareness of autism. Decreased stigmatization and improved access to services are stressors which contribute to this problem. The teacher and the other people aware of the student’s condition may exaggerate the situation. While some things she may do are normal to all students, the teacher may see them as abnormal for fear that she may do something dangerous. The teacher is aware as the 504 is for children with special needs (Geschwind, 2008). Decreased stigmatization as a factor can be applied so much that the child is seen as a normal child, and in turn, end up not being treated for the illness. The child, especially when put together with the other normal children, may not be able to receive the special attention needed in the intervention. Due to improved access to services, some parents have assumed their responsibility in the intervention. They heavily rely on the school based and state based services. If a child’s parents are not drawn in their child’s therapy plans, the likelihood of accomplishment is very low. This is because once parents are drawn in the development and executions of interventions, the procedures are more prone to be applied across perspectives and people, and the child is highly likely to be trained and use skills more promptly. On the other hand, if educators and therapists develop and execute interventions, but are not maintained at home, the skills are expected to be learned at a slower rate. In this case, the likelihood of them having long term gain will be very little (Geschwind, 2008). When looking for a therapist to provide intervention services to the child, it is important for one to ensure qualifications. The person supervising the child’s ABA based program for example, should be a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. The ones that are not certified are likely not to be qualified and may cause more harm on the child. Client’s address of the problem The client is aware that the problem is treatable, a reason why she has sought help for her child. She understands that individuals with autism learn differently from normal children, but are capable of learning. She seems to believe that her daughter can be taught to communicate, interact socially and involve in right behavior. The client has accessed services for her child. These include the school based services and the state based services. The child has been sent to school on the recommendation of the district New York. The mother has looked for an aid for assistance. This has significance as the child is in safe hands and not exposed to danger. There are also notable improvements on the child since she was assigned a new guide. The mother is open to any help accorded to her daughter. This can be seen on how grateful the mother was when we called her over the phone. The mother has allowed us to intervene in her daughter’s help. We were able to train her on self recognition, singing and getting her a new helper who will aid her to learn more in her self improvement. My understanding of the problem Children with autism have problems in three main areas: communication, socialization, and restricted patterns of behaviors and interests. The characteristics of children with autism spectrum include: Uneven growth of cognitive skills: virtual strength in processing chart versus oral information. Social skills problem in accepting social rules such as taking and giving turns. This entails difficulty in understanding and interpreting the feelings of others, problems in taking the viewpoint of other people as well as those of problems starting and maintaining contacts and conversations with other people. Trouble reacting to verbal information obtainable at a fast pace. This enatils trouble understanding several step commands and incoherent understanding of spoken information. It calls for oral information to be frequent and to mainly contain information that is fresh (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Interventions to utilize Since the first step of intervention for kids with autism spectrum disorders is learning, developing mutual and optimistic family-school partnerships is vital. Early identification is essential since it assists the parent in gaining an understanding her child’s needs early enough during growth. Empowering the parent through knowledge will make her the top supporters for her child. By working jointly and sharing information among each other and with community professionals, parents and teachers can develop strong educational plans for kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Close contact between the parents and teachers will guarantee stability across the child’s program and help improve the relations between the school and the parents. Individual Education Programs (IEPs) for scholars with autism should be complete and comprise of environmental supports and connected services. Using surroundings supports, information from preceding teachers and interrelated services such as speech and language therapy and psychological services, will aid in stabilizing the child’s program, and enhance cooperation between ordinary education and special education workers (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In 2001, the national research council convened a group of researchers who were to sum up the ingredients of successful intercessions for kids with autism. The recommendations of the council for children were: urgent enrollment into the curriculum and guarantee active involvement in thorough programming for not less than 25 hours a week, with a whole year programming founded on the child’s age and maturity level, intended and frequent teaching occasions in diverse settings, with adequate attention from adults and founded on the child’s progress and personal needs and provision of family doings and parent instruction, conducting ongoing appraisal and evaluation to measure development as well as making modifications (Mills & Merchant, 2011). Individualized support and services are essential, for the reason that every autistic child’s needs are unique. Therefore, it is important that the schooling system takes into account this variance and be able to provide the necessary help to the student. In our case, it is important that I use this intervention in order to understand the student, and I will be able to come up with a better instruction plan to help her. Finally, systematic instruction intervention can be used to ensure that effective systems are put into place to help the autistic student. The instructions should be in a way that they help the autistic student to systematically learn (Mills & Merchant, 2011). The plan of action The first step was to take the student to school. This is important as the student is in safe hands with the teachers, though not sufficient enough to intervene. The mother should make arrangement to have more time with her child and help her whenever necessary. Medical attention should be necessary as this will help in further child’s needs. The patient should be given a daily routines and procedures to be followed and these routines should be designed in a way which favors the developments to the autistic student. If these routines are not well designed, they will cause more harm than good. Hence, care should be taken into account in designing these routines and procedures (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Practice skills There are a number of practice skills used which include: effective communication, symptom management and observation. These skills are important to the autistic student as she is not able to utter words, do not recognize her photos and cannot sing properly (Silverman, 2012). It is vital that the child goes through various therapies so as to make her be capable of speaking, recognize her photo and construct a sentence to communicate with others. Effective communication is important to the autistic patient since it will help them to explain themselves to others and one can easily understand their needs and give assistance. Through observation, the autistic patient will be able to observe things and then translate them. This is necessary to his supervisor to be able to analyze the developments which are taking place. Any positive developments will show that the patient is getting better with the intervention being used otherwise, the intervention should be dropped and other interventions used (Silverman, 2012). Evaluation of the work Autism requires continuous interventions in order to help the patient. Therefore, the mother should not stop assisting her child until she gets to normalcy or as long as she can. It is important to understand the situation one is in and be able to cope with it (Fredericks, 2008). These interventions are time and resource consuming, and this will put more strain to the only bread-win that is the mother. Though, strenuous, it is good for the autistic child. Sessions with the counselor should be sufficiently enough. This is because an autistic needs more time with a counselor, and the recommended twice-a-week attendance is not sufficient enough (Mills & Merchant, 2011). Supervision Supervision is the close monitoring of the situation of the student. To achieve this, I ensured that the student is kept in environmental friendly areas like having her associate with her peers as much as possible, the environment is safe and predictable and has minimal transitions and stimulus (Shannon, 2011). I gave the student consistent routines and procedures like looking into the mirror, identifying herself in her photos and also singing. These routines and procedures were done in such a way that they ensured that the autistic student got independence as much as possible. In supervising the autistic student, I ensured that there were minimal distractions and less stimulus activities which might lead to her getting divided attention. The autistic student should be provided with individualized incentives and reinforcements to boast her behavior and also one should be guided mostly by her behavior modification techniques. This is because the student’s behavior will enable you to understand and help her to teach (Shannon, 2011). The supervision provided the student with the much needed help as she was in a position to walk up and down the hall ways without holding hands. The new aid was assigned to her to make noticeable improvements to the student, and indeed, it did help since the student did not run away as it was expected at the start of the intervention. It was also noted that there was many improvements with the student through this method of supervision. The student does not run and grab other students (Shannon, 2011). References American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-IV-TR. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. Fredricks, C. (2008). Autism. Detroit: Thomson Gale. Geschwind, D. H. (2008). Autism: Many Genes, Common Pathways? Cell, 135(3):391-395. Mills, R. & Merchant, S. (2011). Intervention in autism: a brief review of the literature. Tizard Learning Disability Review, 16 (4): 20-35. Shannon, J. B. (2011). Autism and pervasive developmental disorders sourcebook.Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics. Silverman, C. (2012). Understanding autism: Parents, doctors, and the history of a disorder. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Read More