The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Raising children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders presents many challenges. Individuals with ASD have complex needs that require a broad intervention plan. While comprehensive planning is becoming more widely used in the educational setting, the benefits of this approach in the home setting are just beginning to be recognized. This presentation will provide easy-to-use, yet comprehensive tools for planning and implementing effective intervention programs at home and in school. Raising children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders presents many challenges. Individuals with ASD have complex needs that require a broad intervention plan. While comprehensive planning is becoming more widely used in the educational setting, the benefits of this approach in the home setting are just beginning to be recognized. This presentation will provide easy-to-use, yet comprehensive tools for planning and implementing effective intervention programs at home and in school.

The presentation will begin with a brief discussion of the challenges that parents face. A discussion of common approaches that parents use to address their child’s needs and the pitfalls encountered. An emphasis will be placed on designing more effective interventions by learning to identify and comprehensively address aspects of autism that underlie social and behavioral challenges. Simple tools that will help parents to understand their child’s strengths and needs will be introduced. Approaches to sharing this information with school staff and other professionals, while maintaining positive working relationships, will be discussed. Presenters will then introduce a process for planning and implementing comprehensive interventions in the home and school settings known as Ziggurat and CAPS.

The Ziggurat Model contains five-levels in a hierarchal structure that must be included in a comprehensive intervention plan. These areas are: Sensory and Biological; Reinforcement; Structure and Visual/Tactile Supports, Task Demands, and Skills to Teach. Each level represents an area that must be addressed in order for an intervention plan to be comprehensive. Interventions at each level are selected to address the individual’s true needs to ensure that “the autism” is addressed. Thus, interventions are meaningful – meeting underlying needs instead of masking them. The presentation will outline evidenced-based interventions on each of the five levels of the Ziggurat.

The Comprehensive Autism Planning System (CAPS) assists in the implementation of an intervention plan. The CAPS was originally designed to be used in the school setting. It provides an overview of a student’s daily schedule by time and activity as well as the supports that are needed during each period of the day. An adaptation of this approach to help parents address their child’s needs will be presented. CAPS may be used in the home setting as a guide to interventions and supports required during different activities at home (e.g., mealtime, bedtime, homework time). The CAPS allows professionals and parents to answer the all-important question: What supports does the child or adolescent need in order to be successful in home and community activities? The CAPS may be used to list the daily tasks and activities, the times they occur, along with the delineation of supports needed to ensure success. In addition, the CAPS includes a plan for determining how skills are to be generalized to other settings.

Through use of these approaches, parents will learn the importance of designing and implementing targeted interventions to address autism. Case scenarios demonstrating the intervention design process and research based strategies will be included.

Participants will be able to:

·        Recognize common intervention pitfalls

·        Identify the relationship of underlying characteristics of ASD with observable behavior

·        List five areas required for a comprehensive intervention

·        Describe a process for successfully implementing an intervention plan at home

·        Describe strategies for communicating with school and other professionals

·        Describe research validated strategies for intervention

Learning Objectives: