Coordinating Your Child’s Care pt.1
When you have a child with autism, you may be involved in many different therapies with many different providers. Their care team may include school, ABA, OT, PT, Speech, counseling, doctor’s visits, etc. So naturally, one of the common questions parents have is, “how do we coordinate all of this therapy?”
One of the most helpful analogies I can provide is a social worker. A social worker often plays the role of care coordinator, ensuring a client has access to all the necessary services and supports. You need to be your own child’s social worker in some ways.
Step 1: Familiarize yourself with the different therapies. What is ABA? What is Speech? Understand their purpose in broad terms.
Step 2: Get a copy of your child’s plan for each therapy. Every therapy should have a copy of a procedure or assessment they completed. Schools will have this as well.
Step 3: Read the plan yourself and ask questions. If you don’t understand something, ask the person who wrote it to explain it to you.
Step 4: Share those plans with all the other providers.
Step 5: Do spot checks to ensure the different therapies aren’t conflicting with one another. For example, is speech saying using pictures to communicate, but ABA uses spoken language? If there are differences, bring them up and make the providers resolve them.
Step 6: Keep a watchful eye on all the different therapies. As a parent, you’ll know what’s best for your child. So be sure always to have a critical look at each treatment. If one isn’t working, ask them to change it.
