Aspect.Building.Blocks

Introduction

Aspect has over 25 years experience delivering best practice intervention and services to children aged 0-6 with an autism spectrum disorder, their families and communities. Aspect continues to pioneer the development of early childhood intervention through its service known affectionately as ‘Building Blocks’.

Aspect employs speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, special education teachers and psychologists to deliver an evidenced based, multidisciplinary framework.The services utilise key elements from behavioural, developmental and social learning, therapy based and family based interventions.

Aspect has established strong partnerships with other agencies, expanding its service base by enabling partner organisations to acquire essential skills and knowledge required to deliver ‘Building Blocks’ services within their own communities.

Aspect Early Intervention offers the following services: Home Based service,Centre Based service, More ThanWords – Hanen Program Parent Training Program, More ThanWords – Hanen Program plus Centre Based, and Therapy service.

Home based service

The home based service consists of 1:1 programs for children aged 0 – 6 years who have an ASD and is delivered by speech language pathologists, special education teachers and occupational therapists.

The year-long program has a strong family centred approach where goals and outcomes are developed in close collaboration working on achieving results in key areas of family priority.

The program has an emphasis on developing skills in the areas of;

teaching joint attention, play and imitation skills
building functional communication
teaching social interaction and relating skills and understanding
advancing daily living skills
modulating sensory issues
development of key pre-academic skills
positive behaviour support
generalisation of skills taught across environments
preparation and facilitation of successful transition to school

As the program is implemented in collaboration with parents, one of the highest priorities is to engage parents in sessions and empower them with the skills to continue to use therapy and teaching techniques in their daily lives, thus providing a rich learning and engaging environment for their child to continue to develop and extend their skill acquisition.

For each child engaging in the service an individual education plan is designed to focus the program on long term and short term objectives.Where the child is involved in other educational or therapy services these goals are developed in close collaboration with these services to ensure all professionals are working towards achieving optimal outcomes for the child and family.

Pre-school visits are also provided by one of Aspect’s multidisciplinary early intervention consultants, to enable generalisation of skills and build capacity around ASD learning and intervention strategies for the staff of the pre-school to ensure optimal success for the child and family.

Centre based service

The centre based service is designed for children, aged 2-6 who have an ASD, and their families, and is elivered by speech language pathologists, special education teachers, psychologists and occupational herapists.The year-long program has a strong family centred approach where goals and outcomes are developed in close collaboration,working on achieving results in key areas of family priority. It also builds on family strengths and capacity to ensure that developmental outcomes are generalised beyond the program setting.

The centre based program has two components;

1.Child component – children attend a highly structured small group (maximum of 6 children).
The group operates for 2 hours and the children participate in 4 structured modules which include:
indoor play, outdoor play, circle time and snack time.

The modules incorporate the following key intervention areas;

motor skill development – fine and gross motor
communication - building functional communication and language development
development of key pre-academic skills
play – teaching joint attention, play and imitation skills
social/emotional – teaching social interaction, relating skills and understanding of emotions
self regulation – modulating sensory issues & positive behaviour support
advancing daily living skills
generalisation of skills taught across environments
preparation and facilitation of successful transition to school

2. Parent component – parents attend a 2 hour structured series of parent training sessions designed to provide support and promote understanding and management of an ASD. These sessions are crucial in helping to establish a family’s network of support and ability to cope with the challenges they face.

The modules incorporate such topics as:

what is the difference between normal vs ASD development
early Intervention options and latest research
school options and psychometric evaluations
promoting family resilience
early communication
developing social play
sensory integration
positive behaviour support

The goals of the parent training and support component are to provide parents with the skills and onfidence to implement program goals throughout their child’s day and on an ongoing basis.

Home visits and preschool visits are also provided by one of Aspect’s multidisciplinary early intervention consultants, to enable generalisation of skills and build capacity around ASD learning and intervention strategies for the staff of the preschool and in the home environment to ensure optimal success for the child and family.

More Than Words – Hanen Program

‘MoreThan Words’ is a unique,world renowned Hanen Program which provides an intensive training rogram for parents of children withAutism under age 6. The 10-week program derives its theoretical ramework from a social pragmatic developmental perspective and emphasises the collaboration of both behavioural and naturalistic child-centred programs; the breaking down of activities into structured, small steps found in anApplied BehaviourAnalysis (ABA) program, and the provision of opportunities to use language for functional purposes built into more naturalistic approaches.

The program provides parents with the tools to help engage and develop their child’s communication skills. Parents learn a number of strategies that help to improve their child’s communication and interaction and these strategies are especially geared to the particular communication challenges that come with an autism spectrum disorder and other social communication disorders.

Some of the strategies include:

how to create predictable and repetitive everyday routines that will help their child learn to communicate
how to use visual comprehension supports to help their child’s understanding and expression
how to develop their child’s play skills and use these as opportunities for language learning
why their child reacts in certain ways and strategies to support positive behaviour
strategies to support development of peer relationships

More Than Words – Hanen Program plus centre based

The ‘More Than Words’ centre based program will be an extended year-long program which will involve comprehensive training to parents, individualised practise sessions with children, and individual home visits providing video feedback sessions.This extended program provides more extensive parent support when working with their child and consolidates the ‘practice’ and ‘personalise’ components of ‘More Than Words’.

Therapy service

The therapy service will provide 1:1 home based, year-long therapy programs focusing on the disciplines of speech language pathology and occupational therapy.

The focus of speech language pathology services will incorporate communication and social skill development as key intervention areas. Baseline assessments will be administered (formal, informal, dynamic) and therapy goals and objectives developed. Therapy will utilise the following techniques;

visual communication and comprehension strategies to facilitate expressive and receptive communication
picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
use of social stories to explain social situations and aid the development of socially appropriate responses to social cues
Functional Communication Training (FCT)
implementation of speech generating devices

Occupational therapy services will take a sensory integrative approach. Baseline assessments will be dministered (formal, informal, dynamic) and therapy goals and objectives developed.Therapy will tilise the following key developmental areas;