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ABC was founded in
1987 by Joseph E. Morrow, Ph.D., and Brenda J. Terzich, M.A., to provide
Applied Behavior Analysis services for persons with special needs. We
began by providing in-home behavioral services to the developmental
disabled population throughout Northern, Central, and Southern California.
This included group parent training and
behavior consultation to Community Care Facilities. We have provided
behavioral services for over 3000 clients. Along with the
continuation of these services, ABC opened its first classroom for children
diagnosed on the autism spectrum in 1994. Currently, we provide services
for 8 Regional Centers, over 50 School Districts
and 30 Community Care Facilities.
Present Autism services include over 300
intensive behavioral treatment in-home programs and about 125
students in our four schools.
* * * NEW ABC SCHOOL IN Fairfield * * *
ABC HAS A NEW SCHOOL IN FAIRFIELD
AND ABA SERVICES FOR THAT AREA
Fairfield
743 East Tabor
Avenue Fairfield, CA 94533
Phone (707)
425-7511 Fax (707) 425-7611
* * * Click here to EMAIL * * *
* * * * ABC School in Portugal * * * *
Contact: A. Marcal@netcabo.pt
Phone: 964.042.747
ABC SCHOOL - Sacramento/Duarte
ABC school is
designed to meet the individual needs of children who are diagnosed with
Autism or ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) between the ages of 3 and 15
years of age. Intensive Behavioral Treatment (IBT) is provided within a
language-based ABA
educational environment where teaching is highly
structured for acquisition of skills. The teaching environment becomes less
structured as the student demonstrates the use of the skills learned in
natural settings and across routines throughout the day. Within ABC's
unique generalization framework, our general curriculum teaches each child
critical language skills, functional activities, socializations
initiation/spontaneity and generalization of mastered concept/skills. These
skills are built into every student's educational program and
individualized to meet his or her learning style and unique needs. The
overall goal is to prepare the student for reintegration into his/her
neighborhood school.
Today, ABC, based
in Sacramento, has over 450 employees and provides services throughout
California. For out-of-towners interested in visiting our Sacramento
site or attending a workshop in Sacramento,
we may be able to provide modest accommodations on
our campus. When arranging a visit please let us know if you
would be interested in this possibility.
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Language based: The primary deficit in children diagnosed on the
autism spectrum is the lack of appropriate communication skills. Our
first effort is to build a repertoire that will allow the child to
appropriately and effectively request his or her wants/needs. Building
on that, we teach the students to comment about the world around them, the
skill of answering questions about the world and themselves, to imitate the
language of others, to read, to write and finally to learn to qualify and
respond to their own words. All of our students learn the first and
some make it to the last. But, the acquisition of language is our
primary goal. In this task we are informed by B.F. Skinner's
book VERBAL BEHAVIOR and those current researchers (Michael, Sundberg,
Bondy, et. al.) who have added to that work.
Generalization: Recreating Environments to Accelerate Learning (R.E.A.L.).
Students diagnosed on the autism spectrum learn many skills in a discrete
trials format, sitting across the table from a therapist.
Unfortunately, when things change such as a different wording of a request,
a different location, etc., the learned skill fails to generalize to the
different situation. ABC has developed a systematic 5 level program
to enhance the generalization of skills learned in the discrete trials
format. We call this programming of generalization by the acronym R.E.A.L.
and it begins as soon as a task is learned. R.E.A.L. involves
moving away from the table to novel situations, rewording requests, adding
natural environmental distracters, requiring the skill in daily life
routines, etc., while still maintaining the learned behavior. Therapists
are guided by ABC's R.E.A.L. program during assessment, treatment
development and lesson progression. R.E.A.L. involves the
eventual integration of learned skills into the daily life requirements of
the student, including relations with the social community.
The Picture
Exchange Communication System (PECS
):While all children diagnosed on the autism spectrum
have language deficits, perhaps a majority have significant deficits in
vocalizing. Our "treatment of choice" in this situation is PECS
. We teach students to initiate communication via
the exchange of picture icons that represent items or events in the
environment. We use PECS
to build a functional communication repertoire where
the child can request/reject, comment about the environment and even
socially interact with others. As the child initiates a request
and exchanges the picture icon with the communicative partner (CP), the CP
will accompany it with modeling of the appropriate vocalization for the
situation. For example, when the child has exchanged an icon for a
desired item such as a toy, the CP will say, as he/she is presenting the
item to the child, "I want toy". Our experience has been
that appropriate vocalizations begin to be acquired by the child with this
procedure, typically after a pause is added by the CP prior to stating the
item requested (e.g., the CP says "I want {Pause} toy").
ABC has four certified PECS
trainers and has a professional relationship with the
developers of PECS,
Andrew Bondy and Lori Frost which includes joint
presentations of PECS
workshops.
Positive
Programming: ABC does not use
punishment to reduce problem behaviors. Instead, we use a technology
from behavior analysis called positive programming. With this
technology, a functional analysis is made of the behavior. In other
words, we analyze the environmental antecedents and consequences to see what
is evoking the problem or what the student gets out of the behavior.
Often simple prevention techniques extinction and/or redirection can
suffice to solve the situation. Many times problem behavior continues
because it is reinforced by attention or escape from demands. In such
cases, we teach more appropriate ways to get attention or to deal with
demands, using positive reinforcement. Overall, we believe
problem behavior is a result of poor environmental contingencies, and it is
these contingencies we change rather than try to suppress behavior with
punishment.
Outcomes: Consistent
with over 40 years of scientific data from the field of Applied Behavior
Analysis (ABA), ABC finds that all of our clients make progress with ABA
technology.
For example, 100% of our classroom students are effectively
communicating their wants and needs within one year, either vocally and/or
by PECS,
and sometimes ASL(American Sign Language). We
have succeeded in transitioning most of our students to a less restrictive
environment usually their neighborhood school.
Some results can
only be described as spectacular. Consistent with the findings of
Ivar Lovaas, Patricia Krantz, Lynn McClannahan and others, we find that
some of our students can attend regular education classrooms with same age
peers. "In the first four years of providing school services ABC had nine students who came to us before the age of four
years and one month who reached this criterion and were placed in regular
education programs without supports. They continue to succeed in
those placements ."
While several of
our intensive in-home clients have become indistinguishable from same age
peers, we are currently analyzing these data for a more objective analysis.
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