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article in the times today. autism and aba methodsDecember 18, 2007
One-to-one teaching is a lifeline for autistic youngstersDavid Sharrock
The morning rush hour is ploughing along east Belfast’s Newtownards Road through curtains of rain and there’s a weariness in the eyes as the weekend approaches. Opposite a Drive-Thru McDonald’s a collection of portakabins is home to a unique experiment in the teaching of six very special boys, all of them on the further reaches of the autism spectrum.
Inside the SPEAC Centre the gloom instantly lifts. Peter, 12, Mark, 11, Emmet, 9, Patrick, 8, and Matthew, 7, have just arrived and are already happily engaged in their Friday morning activities.
Later they will be going swimming at a municipal pool but before that it’s time for their mid-morning break and the pupils gather together around a table, sitting at place mats decorated with their names and photographs to eat fruit, yoghurt and crisps.
It’s clear that they are all enjoying themselves hugely. Emmet amazes me by breaking into an expert and rather uplifting whistle.
“This is a huge achievement for these guys,” says Siobhan Dornan, the class leader. “It used to take five class assistants but now just one of us can supervise them.” As she talks she helps Patrick, who wants to put more than one grape in his mouth at a time.
She gently but firmly holds his hand until he has finished eating before allowing him to scoop up another from his bowl and pop it in his mouth. It’s a simple but illuminating illustration of the principles behind Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), the intensive one-to-one teaching method which SPEAC (Special Provision for Education for Autistic Children) has modelled on Treehouse.
In fact it’s a unique partnership pilot project between SPEAC, the local authority and TreeHouse, which The Times is supporting in this year’s charity appeal.
The project is nearing the end of its three-year lifespan. For now its future is uncertain but the success is most evident in the atmosphere of calm which reigns in the unit, situated within the grounds of Tor Bank, a special needs school.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Applied Behavioral Analysis method of teaching used here has transformed the lives not just of the six boys but also their families.
TreeHouse was the first school to adapt ABA, a home schooling system developed in the US, for the classroom and from is base in north London is now helping other schools as far afield as Belfast to do the same.
When Gerry McCann arrives for a chat Patrick’s face lights up. Father picks up son and swings him from side to side.
“Patrick seemed a very normal child, walking and talking, but just before his second birthday he had his first seizure,” says Mr McCann. “He suddenly went to having 14 epileptic seizures a day. He could no longer walk properly, he lost his speech. He couldn’t cry, wouldn’t laugh.
“It was catastrophic, he didn’t recognise us. We were told that the best we could hope for was for him to have perhaps just one or two seizures a day for the rest of his life. But he hasn’t had a single one these last two years.
“We’ve had to rebuild him. It’s a sort of contract, what is done here at the school has to be done at home and vice versa. It never stops, it’s a 24-hour a day learning experience, but he has made great strides.
“Only for TreeHouse, they have been our inspiration and our soul-mates. They have supported us in so many ways. Without TreeHouse we would have been in so many difficulties.
“Before this, it would have been the case that Patrick would have been in residential care for the rest of his life. We now have the opportunity to give our child the best chance there is to avoid that.
“Since he’s come here there is a huge difference. He’s out of nappies, he can request to go to the toilet. We can take him shopping at Sainsbury’s on a Saturday morning, although if I turn left rather than right when we enter the car park he becomes very tense.
“He can drink out of a normal cup. We don’t expect him to learn geography or history here, we want him to learn and acquire normal social skills. We have this narrow window of opportunity and it’s a race against time to equip him with a level of social skills and independence for the rest of his life.”
In October Peter had a tumour removed from his brain, major surgery which required a stay in the Royal Victoria Hospital yet which won him the admiration of all the medical staff who attended him.
His mother Deirdre recalls how he used to be. “Peter had two-to-one supervision at another school, he was a very difficult child. It wasn’t his fault. We got together with other families and travelled a very hard road but with Treehouse we’ve come through.
“From those days to the lovely little boy that we have today is remarkable. He’s recently made his confirmation with P7 pupils at the local primary. When your child is going along in the right direction it makes everything easier.”
Teacher Gillian Smyth is especially pleased by the progress made beyond the school's brightly decorated walls. “I remember the first time we took them to Stormont Park it was horrendous, with children stuck at the top of slides!
“Now they are amazing, they go off and lay on their favourite equipment. We choose activities that they can also do with their families and we’ve built up ten-pin bowling as well.”
Siobhan Dornan has almost a decade’s experience of the ABA method, which is based upon the idea that rewarded behaviour is more likely to be repeated than ignored behaviour.
“The boys are all very different but they have all already made great gains,” she says. “It’s preparing them for life. It really is a 24-hour approach, once a fortnight a key-worker comes out to your house because even a simple thing – for example, perhaps one of them isn’t coming down from his room – can cause mayhem. It’s really important to transfer skills between home and school.
“Before coming here probably all these children would have ended up in residential care. Now that’s no longer the case.”
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