Free Custom «Autism Problems» Essay Paper

Autism is a neurological disorder which is characterized by impaired social interaction problems, difficult in communication and repetitive behaviors. Autism disorder begins earlier in children under three years. It affects the brains thus causing delays in language and cognitive development. It is genetic disease and it causes are not well understood.  In rare cases, the environmental vulnerabilities and birth defects are the major believed cause for the autism disorder.  Usually, the signs are noticed in the first earlier years of the child. The child develops some repetitive behaviors and most of the time the child isolates him or herself from others. Children with autism develop differently with other normal children. This is because they many develop better cognitive skills but does not develop motor skills. Learning may be unpredictable hence they find it difficult to cope up with others in the learning environment. There is need of understanding autism thus planning earlier ways of handling individuals suffering from autism before the situation worsens.

Case study

Jessica is a six years old child and she is in Grade 3. When she was a child she seemed to developing normally like other children. However, after one year, her parents started to notice some strange behaviors. She developed acute illness but after receiving vaccines, she lost memory and thus started exhibiting some repetitive behaviors. Moreover, she socially withdrew from other children and most of the times she wanted to be left alone. When she started joining her school, the teacher realized that socially clumsy and sometimes offensive to her comments or to others’ comments. Jessica seemed not interested with other children and learning was difficult until her teacher decided to make an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to her. This program was meant to help her cope up in the learning environment. Jessica’s sickness gave her family a difficult task thus her parents decided to seek earlier intervention program in order to help Jessica achieve future goals.

Rationale and planning

The underlying principle behind autism is that there is need of understanding autism thus planning earlier ways of handling individuals suffering from autism before the situation worsens. This is because the disease may affect better development of the child in case earlier intervention the programs as well as diagnostic would not be carried out. According to American Psychiatric Association (2000), the onset symptoms for autism appear when the child is below three years. The disorder is categorized by impaired social interaction issues, communication impairment and repetitive or stereotyped behavioral patterns. Moreover, the child demonstrates some symptoms, which vary depending on the severity disorder. The studies have been carried in order to find out the cause behind this disorder. However, the clear identification cause has been difficult but some researcher reveals that autism disorder is caused by environmental vulnerabilities and genetic factors.

Additionally, once the symptoms have been identified in earlier life development of a child with autism, it is crucial to start planning for care provision. The planning process involves determining the priorities, setting goals which should be met and developing a caring or an intervention plan. In planning for the care provision, it is significant for the caregiver should involve Jessica, the family members and the heath provider team. Therefore, the goals to be achieved should be chosen. The next task is outlining those goals which should be achieved in the plan. In the outlined goals, the caregiver should decide which problem should be given the first priority. The stated goals should indicate as to what need to be achieved in case the problem identified is taken into consideration. Actually, the goals can be short or long term depending on the plan made by the care provider of the child.

Moreover, in the plan, the care provision technique chosen should aim at achieving the required goals. For instance, if the log-term plan set in the goal is to enable Jessica develop better cognitive and motor skills, the care provider’s action will be directing Jessica to develop better cognitive skills before the end of the year. The care giver make a plan through recording down the objectives and the actions necessary to aid in achieving the stated goals. On the other hand, Jessica’s teacher at school would make a plan indicating the activities that should be done in order to help her to achieve future goals. This is through use of IEP plan whereby the teacher can make a rationale on the crucial things which Jessica could first achieve in learning and language development as shown in the table.

Autism Student outcome	Learning intervention with rationale	evaluation
Goals: -Student will develop better communication skills -Student will improve in social skills -Student will advance in cognitive skills	-Employing direct strategies as a teaching method -Creating good relationship with the student -Providing assistance and encouraging the student to play with others	-Student start making progress in communication -She stars interacting with others slowly -Showing advancement and improvement in cognitive skills

Sample of an IEP Plan

Comprehensive detailed presentation of autism concepts and issues related to the case study

Considering the situation of Jessica, Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) is one of the concepts, which should be employed in assessing Jessica’s behaviors. FBA provides hypotheses, which reveal the relationship between the specific environmental events as well as behaviors (Batshaw, Pellegrino and Roizen, 2007). The research study carried out reveals that both desirable and undesirable actions are learned though social and physical interactions within the environment. Therefore, the FBA concept should be employed in identifying the reinforcement source for challenging behaviors. This will act as an intervention basis designed for reducing the occurrence of Jessica’s behaviors. Functional behavior can be taught as the purpose behavior which suits Jessica. Behaviors may appear different b they serve the same purpose and reveals useful information that provides an account for the condition of the autism child. However, identifying Jessica’s conditions which accounts for her behavior requires the behavior to be altered. Thus, assessing functional behavior can produce vital results with respect to effective intervention strategies.

Applied behavioral analysis (ABA) concept can be used in modifying the behaviors of Jessica. ABA is the concept used for analyzing the behaviors which are used systematically in improving social behavior of individuals with disabilities. This concept focuses on the observable relationship behaviors within the environment. The ABA method can be used in changing Jessica’s behaviors in the environment where she is staying.  It can be applied in areas of social significance thus changing the problem behavior. Behavior intervention method will be used in investigating Jessica’s adaptation to the environment. The ABA intervention is used in treating individual with disabilities especially autism disorder (Amaral, Dawson and Geschwind, 2011). Therefore, this intervention can be used in identifying the variables responsible for behavioral change.

The last concept or issue is the Applied Behavior Intervention (ABI). This concept is one of the most significant intervention approaches used in helping people with disabilities to change their behaviors. Usually, parents are encouraged to participate in intervention programs. This program is vital because it helps the care giver of autism children in helping them to change their behaviors overtime. Behavioral assessment and intervention is a program that aims in helping children suffering from autism to solve behavioral issues. ABI requires the care provider or parents to intervention or involve in the daily activities of the autism children. In this way, the care provider will be able to understand the behaviors of the child thus making vital analysis on the way of improving the behaviors.

History of the conditions characteristic/trait assessment

When Jessica was one and a half years old, she started developing some strange behavior during her childhood development. This was after she fell sick and diagnosed of an acute diseases. Her parents taught that the vaccines which she was given contributed to her problem but after family diagnosis was done, it was discovered that she genetically inherited the disease form her mother. Therefore, Jessica developed some repetitive behaviors or verbal actions which were strange. For instance, she started banging her head most of the time something that started worrying her family. Batshaw, Pellegrin and Roizen (2007) point out that repetitive character tends to restrict autism children when they are playing. Some of them tend to exhibit a compulsive adherence to routine work.

Another condition characteristic is impairments in communication. Jessica started developing communication problem adult became difficult for their family to understand what she is communicating. This made communication a problem and it forced the family to use signs in communicating. Although, Jessica used to utter some words clearly, sometimes she could not communicate totally or stammered when communicating with others. Most autism children do not use language for functional communication thus they remain functionally mute throughout their entire life (Rodriguez, 2011). Some autism children develop some language but eventually they may lose their memory thus communication may become a problem. Some autism children may show significant generalized delay in language development thus difficult in communication. However, with the case of Jessica, she started communicating very well but after one year she lost her memory. Sometimes she could take long time to understand what someone is telling her and communication became a problem.

Lastly, Jessica started developing impairment in social interaction when she was still young.  Most of the she isolated herself from other children when they were playing. Sometimes she played well with other kids but she certainly withdrew from the group and started doing her own strange things. The current research reveals that lack of reciprocal social interaction is the major autism symptom (Amaral, Dawson and Geschwind, 2011). Most autism children feel depressed and thus do not comfortable with the peers thus they prefer playing alone. They tend to show uncooperativeness when playing with others in a group and they do not make friendship with other children. Moreover, they do not show affection to their friends and they sometimes feel offensive to their comments in a group of friends.

Therapy support/needs being met

Although Jessica is still suffering from autism, her parents and teachers have tried to support her in order to achieve her future goals. Some supporting activities have been provided to her in order to enable Jessica recover from the autism situation. One of the supporting activities is through developing an Individualized Education Program. Jessica’s teacher decided to make a special plan than meets Jessica’s needs. This helped her thus she started coping up in the learning environment. Additionally, her parents took her in hospital and she was diagnosed and some therapies were administered to her. The research study reveals that autism does not have proper treatment but some therapies such as acupuncture, speech therapy, vitamins and mineral supplements are provided. However, these do not totally cure an individual but it makes specific improvements.

Another support provided was Earlier Intervention Program (EIP). This program is vital especially to children suffering from autism disorder. The IEP program provides training activities to parents of autism children into develop cognitive behavioral therapy in building social interaction skills (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). EIP helps autism children to recover quickly as well as adapt to the society. The EIP address the social skills, attention, anxiety, encourages parental interaction and challenging behaviors that may help the child to cope up with others in the society. Rained clinicians work with parents of autism children for about 25 hours in week and it can last for 3 years (Brooke, 2009). This program has helped Jessica because she has started improving her sensory, language skills thus making her to adapt in some situations. The IEP has helped parents of Jessica to manage the challenging and difficulty situations.

Research evidence and consultation over an extended period of time

Making a plan for autism student or a plan for nursing the child sometimes consumes a lot of time. This is because one needs to carefully plan and make a timetable for recording down information necessary for helping the child. Thus, there is need of making a compressive plan on what is required to be done for the autism child. The plan consumes much of the time thus the researcher may not get adequate time of finishing the work within the required time period. Therefore, the researcher may make a consultation, which be given an extended period of time in order to finish the work. This enables the researcher to provide valid plan that will help the child to improve her cognitive skills, communication and above all change behavior. It is vital to provide the research evidence in order to convince someone that the work needs extra time to be accomplished.

Effective primary research consultation with family consultation with school

Participation of family and school in education program of autism children is beneficial for educational development and success in academic. The participation of parents and their cooperation with teachers in the education arena has contributed to better performance for many autism children. Moreover, due to cooperation between parents and teachers, autism students have encountered fewer problems, increased positive attitudes towards school assignments and more correspondence between the school and the family. The involvement of parents in the education of autism children has led to enhancement in better education. An autism child may acquire knowledge from parents which cannot be experienced in school. Thus, family involvement in the studies of autism children enhances the sense of efficacy thus enabling their disability children to perform well in schools.

Some models have been employed by both family members and the school in learning participation. One of the models is conjoint behavioral consultation (CBC). This model involves the families and schools to collaboratively work together towards helping autism students to achieve success in education. The model creates competencies and encourages family members as well as school personnel to work collaboratively towards building a common interest. This model crates opportunities for schools and families to work as a team. They identify and address the needs through use of data based approach. Additionally, mutual collaboration between parent and teachers with guidance as well as consultations are made to achieve the common objectives.

In addition, the CBC model aims to identify the needs, analyze them and make plans for development as well as evaluation. These stages use interview format in structuring decision making. The overall objectives address the needs of parent and teachers in collaboratively engaging autism children and encouraging them in a strength-based manner. This model addresses the problems occurring across but not within the settings. It enhances efficiency home school partnerships in order to help autism children to learn and perform better. It jointly establishes a collaboration that is problem solving oriented. The CBC model is effective in addressing issues of language advancement, behavioral change and socio emotional issues.

Consultation intervention technique is employed by the school personnel and the families. This technique is characterized by decision-making, problem solving, communications and collaborations in order to promote the welfare of autism children (Brooke, 2009). Consultation is delivered through the teacher who acts as the intermediary between the autism child and the family. The consultation made involves interpersonal exchanges, communications and through the process of social influences. The consultant is the one who guides the family and the school following certain guidelines on the way consultations can proceed. Persuasion may be employed in trying to convince the consul tee that the consultation made is more suitable. In a broader sense, persuasion is a tool used in solving good relationships. Thus, it raises some few distinct ethical concerns when carrying out the primary research consultations.

Reflection evidences

I have experienced that autism is a neurological disorder that develops earlier in young children. The autism disorder does not have a clear treatment but some earlier intervention programs would be carried out in helping the child to cope up with the situation. From the case study of Jessica, I have learnt that even through autism does not have treatment, supporting autism child is crucial. This is through providing therapies such as speech therapy, acupuncture, vitamins and mineral supplements thus creating some improvements to the child. Lastly, I have learnt that making a better plan and rationale is imperative. This is because it helps the care provider or the teacher of autism child to provide the child with better services necessary for achieving her future goals.

Therefore, I recommend use of Individualized Education and Earlier Intervention Programs to be employed when dealing with autism students at school. These programs are crucial because they will help the autism child in achieving her future goals. For instance, IEP is vital because it helps the autism child to improve in language skills and other areas of study. Additionally, I recommend use of techniques such as Functional Behavior Assessment, Applied behavioral analysis and Applied Behavioral Intervention programs. These programs are significant because they aim at providing the welfare of the autism child. All these programs if well utilized will enable the autism child to change the behavior and advance in cognitive and social skills.

In conclusion, there is need of planning earlier ways of handling individuals suffering from autism before the situation worsens. It is crucial to start planning for care provision once the symptoms of autism child have been identified. The care provision technique chosen should aim at achieving the required goals. Functional Behavior Assessment, Applied behavioral analysis and Applied Behavioral Intervention programs should be employed in assessing Jessica’s behaviors. Conjoint behavioral and intervention technique consultations are used in primary research consultation with family members and school personnel. Thus, I recommend use of Individualized Education and Earlier Intervention Programs to be employed because they will help an autism child to achieve future goals.