Three Important Things to Consider When Starting Intervention for a Child Diagnosed With Autism

Abstract

Accepting responsibility for an early and intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) program is accepting responsibility for a child’s future. This is a serious undertaking. Great outcomes are possible with well-implemented EIBI programs (Matson & Smith, 2008) and frightening outcomes occur when they are not (Bibby, Eikeseth, Martin, Mudford, & Reeves, 2001). Every child is precious and has a right to live a safe life filled with opportunities, learning, care, and affection (United Nations, 1959). Furthermore, our ethical guidelines require that we provide effective treatment with informed consent (Behavior Analyst Certification Board, 2004). Skilled and ethical behavior throughout an EIBI program can help children access those rights, enabling them to have happy and productive childhoods, experience harmonious family life, and go on to become contributing members of society. To successfully implement an EIBI program, a sophisticated orchestration is required that includes, but is not limited to, keeping abreast of research, conducting individualized assessments, deciding what programs to introduce when and how, monitoring and revising programs as needed, training and maintaining the teaching skills of all team members, supporting and working with families, collaborating with other professionals, managing resources, and problem solving at every level. The best and most successful EIBI programs have developed well-tuned and robust systems to address each of these factors to produce favorable outcomes (e.g., Harris & Handleman, 1994) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)