INDEPTH: AUTISM
ABA Therapy
Pauline Dakin, for CBC News Online | October 15, 2003
Some families of children with autism say they’re denied treatment that could mean the difference between a lifetime of disability and a productive future.
Across Canada, groups of parents have launched Charter challenges and human rights complaints in an attempt to force provinces to pay for a therapy known as Applied Behavioural Analysis, or ABA.
The ABA teaching method was developed in the United States.
Michelle Beausoleil of Halifax is specially trained in using ABA with autistic children. During a two-hour session with Kyle, she gently holds his hands down to keep him from flapping, and holds his chin to make the 3½-year-old look at her.
The intensive, repetitive one-on-one teaching is at the heart of ABA therapy. It’s designed to actively engage children who commonly have communication, socialization, learning and behavioural problems.
ABA therapy is the most widely accepted treatment for autism. Experts say pre-schoolers should have up to 40 hours a week of the intensive teaching for at least two years.
Some parents say ABA is worth the effort, time and expense – from $25,000 to $40,000 a year, estimates Autism Society Canada.
Provincial funding for ABA is spotty across the country:
- No ABA program in Nova Scotia or Saskatchewan;
- P.E.I.’s limited program has a means test;
- New Brunswick is promising to begin a program soon;
- British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Newfoundland and Labrador pay for some hours of treatment but limit the amount or cut it off after a child reaches school age.
“Children with cancer get treatment, children with diabetes get insulin,” says Kyle’s mother, Tracy Avery. “Why is this any different, really?”
Dr. Suzanne Mark is a family doctor in Prince Edward Island. When her 10-year-old son Roddy was born, Mark began researching and setting up treatment programs for him.
When Roddy was four, she found an ABA therapist in the U.S. to work with her son. She says videos of the sessions prove it works.
In six months Roddy went from crying when the therapist simply tried to get him to sit in a chair to happily sitting at a table chatting with the therapist.
Psychologist Paul McDonnell is a professor emeritus at the University of New Brunswick. He says about half the children who receive ABA therapy improve significantly.
“Some children go from being virtually without language at all to actually being able to speak in sentences and essentially become indistinguishable from typical children,” said McDonnell.
Cost isn’t the only barrier. There’s a shortage of trained ABA workers. Outside of a few private institutions in Ontario, there is nowhere for them to train in Canada.
McDonnell has a proposal before the N.B. government to create a centre for autism training in the province.
He says without a certified program, standards and licensing for workers, children will be exposed to a hodgepodge of treatments of varying success.
“What’s going to happen is governments are going to put money into it but outcomes aren’t going to be what they should be,” he said.
The province hasn’t responded to McDonnell’s proposal. The same thing has happened in P.E.I.
“We have enough evidence today that we can probably change the lives in an important way of a significant number of children,” concurred Prof. Susan Bryson, an internationally recognized expert on autism.
Bryson holds a research chair in autism at Dalhousie University and the IWK Children’s Hospital in Halifax.
“I think we have a responsibility to offer some treatment,” said Bryson. “The trickier question is how much? because there is a big dollar sign here.”
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Some Autism Spectrum Disorders
Autistic disorder: This is also known as classic autism. It affects ability to communicate with and relate to other people. Some people with autistic disorder can speak and interact while some who are more severely affected are completely non-verbal.
Asperger syndrome: People with Asperger syndrome do not have a delay in speech development, but may have a range of deficits in social development. They often also have obsessive, repetitive behaviours and preoccupations such as rocking or hand waving.
Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (CDD): CDD is also known as regressive autism. Children with CDD usually develop normally for two to four years before they begin to lose language, social skills and interest in their environment.
Source: National Alliance for Autism Research
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