Glossary

TEACCH

Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication handicapped Children/Adults. Further information www.teacch.com

PEC's

Picture Exchange Communication System. A communication training package developed in the USA for use with young children with autism and other social-communication deficits.

Icon to I Can

Visual teaching strategies and support for persons with autism and other special learning challenges designed to promote independent functioning across developmental areas, including academic, employment, communication, daily living, and play and leisure. It is compatible with a wide range of instructional models including TEACCH's Structured Teaching, Applied Behavioural Analysis and child centred therapy.

Principles of Sensory Integration

Training for staff that work with children with sensory integrative disorders or sensory processing disorders. For most children, sensory integration develops in the course of ordinary childhood activities. Motor planning ability is a natural outcome of the process, as is the ability to respond to incoming sensation in an adaptive manner. But for some children, sensory integration does not develop as efficiently as it should. When the process of sensory integration is disordered, a number of problems in learning, development, or behaviour may become evident.

ABA

Applied Behavioural Analysis is an intense program which uses principles from the field of Behaviour Modification. Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) is one of the primary instructional methods used in ABA programs for children with Autism. This technique is used to maximize learning and can be used to develop most skills including, cognitive, social, behavioural, fine motor, play, social and self help skills. DTT involves breaking down skills into small sub-skills and teaching each sub-skill, intensely, one at a time. It involves repeated practices with prompting and fading of prompts to insure the child's success. DTT also uses reinforcement to help shape and maintain positive behaviours and skills.

Floortime

The Floortime approach provides a framework for understanding and treating children challenged by autism spectrum and related disorders. It focuses on helping children master the building blocks of relating, communicating and thinking. Floortime is a systematic way of working with a child to help him climb the developmental ladder. It takes a child back to the very first milestone he may have missed and begins the developmental process anew. By working intensively with the child on a one-on-one basis and with parents and therapists, the child can climb the ladder of milestones, one rung at a time, to begin to acquire the skills he is missing. More information at www.floortime.org

Keyhole Project

This NIPPA /Autism NI /Barnardo's course employs a holistic approach to intervention with young children with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder and is aimed at anyone working with pre-school children in an early years setting.

NIPPA

Northern Ireland's regional early years organisation. Nippa's aim is to promote high quality childcare, education, family support and community development.

www.nippa.org

EarlyBird

An NAS three-month programme which combines group training sessions for parents with individual home visits when video feedback is used to help parents apply what they learn, whilst working with their child. Parents have a weekly commitment - to a three hour training session or a home visit, and to ongoing work with their child at home - during the three month programme. The NAS EarlyBird Programme aims:

1. to support parents in the period between diagnosis and school placement.
2. to empower parents and help them facilitate their child's social communication and appropriate behaviour within the child's natural environment.
3. to help parents establish good practice in handling their child at an early age so as to pre-empt the development of inappropriate behaviours

Help Programme

NAS support service for parents and carers of schoolage children youn people and adults who have a recent diagnosis of an autism spectrum diorder