This Website Is Not Legal or Medical Advice. All contents of this website including text, images, and graphics are for general informational purposes only. The information on this website is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional legal advice, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care professional. Do not delay seeking medical treatment because of anything you have read on this website. If you need legal advice, consult with an attorney, as this website is not intended to instruct you to take any legal action or inaction.

Obtaining Effective Treatment is Most Stressful: My Impartial Hearing

A recent article, “Low Standards Corrode Quality of Popular Autism Therapy,” shows how applied behavior analysis (ABA) is not delivered by properly trained staff. In medicine, if doctors do not prescribe properly they are legally liable, but schools and agencies have no liability for not providing applied behavior analysis correctly, so this goes on. I have met people, parents and professionals, disillusioned with ABA, but when I explore it with them, I realized no one implemented ABA according to evidenced based research to begin with. Back to my daughter: I have said for years, at least for me, the hardest part of raising my child with severe autism, is not my daughter’s issues, but rather fighting for help, effective treatment. I just had my first day of impartial hearing after paying privately for an ABA school where my daughter has made progress. New York State refuses to approve schools that offer one to one ABA, which my daughter requires according to many professionals, as well as many other children need, to be safe and to learn. The Department of Education meanwhile never offered my daughter a school to begin with. The irony of it is without her school and home support, I would have had to place her in residential treatment years ago, and that would cost the government even more money. Parents shouldn’t have to pay exorbitant amounts of money, take loans and fight in court for reimbursement, just so they can keep their child at home, which saves government money.

https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/low-standards-corrode-quality-popular-autism-therapy/