The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Individuals with ASD are often taken the emergency room after episodes of severe aggression, self-injury, or property destruction. Unfortunately, community hospital emergency departments often do not have well equipped subacute care programs to refer these patients to following stabilization.

Currently, in the State of Connecticut, many children with autism end up in emergency rooms when challenging behaviors become too intense for caregivers to manage. Emergency room stays becomes lengthy, and psychiatric intervention alone often fails to establish a model that is sustainable, resulting in a return back to the ER.

To remedy this issue, the state of Connecticut, in partnership with The Center for Children with Special Needs, The Department of Developmental Disabilities, and The Department of Children and Families, developed a two-year grant, to establish treatment models for children with ASD in state psychiatric residential treatment facilities. The purpose of this initiative is to provide behavioral intervention to the child and care coordination to the child's caregivers, while establishing sustainable models within the facilities to service children with autism. This session will provide pilot data on the assessments and functional interventions for children receiving support as well as on parent/family outcomes regarding quality of life and use of treatments within the home. The session will also provide a detailed review of the program planning steps taken to develop and implement training models to expand the capacity of participating agencies to meet the needs of children with ASD.

Participants will:

1. Understand the features of an integrated model of care for children with ASD and acute severe behavior who present in the emergency room.
2. Learn about the role of system-level program planning in establishing expanded capacity for treatment families and treatment facilities to successfully support individuals with ASD.
3. Understand processes for utilizing care coordination to ensure effective multidisciplinary, person-centered, planning in order to reduce the likelihood of recidivism.