A Child Centered Team Approach

We believe that every child under this spectrum has his own set of challenges, along with a unique learning style and therefore requires an individualized program that not only meets the needs but also highlights the child’s strengths.

• We believe in targeting all basic developmental domains in the initial home based individualized program.
• We believe that learning should be fun and motivating to encourage child's active participation.
• We believe in training families along with the interventionists, as primary caregivers play an integral role in every child's well being and developing early learning skills.
• We believe that behind each success lies tremendous team effort. To ensure positive team work, open communication and trust are essential.
• We believe that the kids with autism deserve the same access to the normalized setting learning places as any other kid, like choice of integration in the classroom, recreational facilities etc.
• We believe in creating social, educational and supportive opportunities for the affected families in collaboration with the local and provincial community agencies and helpers.
• We believe in raising public awareness about the disorder and its various aspects by networking with the likeminded parents, educators, therapists and social workers.

Our Goals

• Understanding and strengthening child’s coping and learning skills.
• Correct interpretation of the reactive behaviours and strategies to resolve those.
• Identifying the child's most effective exploring style and using that to maximize his learning potential.
• Motivating activities to reduce defensiveness for the sensitive sensory areas to help develop sequential processing.
• Enhancing attention to the elements of the immediate environment.
• Developing receptive comprehension and means of communication
• Developing interest in the pre-academic skills.
• Developing fine, gross and oral motor skills.
• Developing interest in age appropriate activities and games.
• Improving sibling and peer interaction.

Family’s Role

• From now onwards, we are only accepting cases where families will take partial to full responsibility of recruiting their behaviour interventionists and managing/ coordinating the schedules of various team members.
• Family members are strongly encouraged to attend the teaching sessions both in the beginning and during the program. This would help them play and communicate better with the child and can also help the child integrate a newly mastered skill into the daily routine setup.
• If a family member chooses to work as an interventionist on regular basis, then they would be trained in taking data, same as the other interventionists. Data sharing is crucial for the monthly feedback sessions and selecting new learning objectives.

Consultant's Role

• Initial Evaluation of the child's needs.
• Designing a program individualized to the child's needs and strengths.
• Team training and Implementation of the program.
• Regular supervision and objective management.
• Monthly progress tracking data sheets and meeting agendas.
• While accepting a case, special consideration will be given to the kids who are not progressing under the services provided by other local agencies and consultants.

Consultant

Dr. Saima Ijaz is a mother of an autistic boy and an Intensive Behaviour Therapy Consultant. For over a decade now, she has been educating and advocating, parents and professionals alike, on the needs of developing and coordinating child specific early and intensive intervention plans. She has studied and researched extensively to develop teaching strategies that are affective for a wide range of verbal and non-verbal autistic kids. Along with designing a child specific program plan, Dr. Ijaz advocates and implements ABBLS- A as an assessment and tracking tool, and has repeatedly demonstrated that the learning process can be enhanced several folds by making use of these teaching strategies. After the initial setup, coordinating and maintaining the basic learning ladder steps with a team of educators and therapists, has demonstrated a tremendous impact on the child prognosis, and should be monitored carefully during the pre-schools and into the early school years. http://www.actcommunity.net/saima-ijaz.html