I am the founder of ALSO-IN organization, which is the offline organization of the autism platform ALSOLIFE.
My other identity is an autistic child's father, we invested countless efforts in the construction of ALSO-IN, is to make up for the regrets of the heart once, when the resources are too scarce, take the money can not find a good organization, many teachers can not even distinguish between the assessment tools and methodology strategy, ALSO-IN hope to solve all these problems. However, the biggest regret is the speed of building ALSO-IN, it seems that always can not catch up with the speed of the child grows up, when the institution is built, my son has grown up, went to elementary school, not a day in the institution intervention.
The autism field has seen rapid development in the last five years, and this is actually a consumer upgrade industry. When the wealth of social civilization reaches a certain level before attention is paid to it, resources and talents can follow. Before reaching this stage, the industry resources are very scarce, I just entered the industry when the therapists basically did not get systematic training, not to mention BCBA or BCaBA (Certified Behavior Analyst/Associate Analyst), the number of mainland China added together at that time is not more than 20 people, very few teachers can systematically solve the problems raised by the parents, and many teachers rely more on the talent and groping to support.
In the first year of the establishment of ALSO-IN, we took out almost all the funds to train therapists, currently ALSO-IN has one full-time BCBA-D, over 45 BCBA/BCaBA/trainees, and we only have over 150 therapists, so this should be the highest ratio of talent in the industry at this time. In addition to these Behavioral (Associate) Analysts, new therapists are given a three-month intensive training, basically daily exams and weekly exams, which brings the side effect that the elimination rate (30-40%) of new teachers is too high, which can put too much pressure on the trainees and seems not humane enough, our IN supervisory and HR teams have been optimizing the recruiting model in the hope of screening out earlier the suitable therapist candidates to avoid the burden on both sides.
Compared with general education, special education is much more complex, especially autism rehabilitation intervention. Even if they are of the same age, each child has a unique level of ability, developmental baseline, problematic behaviors, and disorders, and the teaching methods and environments that are suitable for them are also different, so autism intervention is actually a non-standardized teaching process, which puts a high demand on the professionalism of the therapists in charge of rehabilitation. The therapist must have a good understanding of the child's abilities, be well versed in each program, be able to set up a very reasonable teaching plan for the child's abilities, be able to deal with a wide range of problematic behaviors, and at the same time, through data analysis, always keep an eye on whether the rate of progress of their child is reasonable, and whether there is a better choice of teaching plan.
After passing all of ALSO-IN's theoretical training, the therapists go into the field to watch how the therapists interact with the children and teach them, and to write summarized feedback on what they have seen and thought about each day. The therapists will initially conduct a large number of simulation exercises for the focus of the practical part of the assessment, applying the learning of more than two months to the actual teaching scenarios, and through such a slow integration process, allowing the new teacher to become a qualified therapist.
In addition to the therapists' own efforts, each center is equipped with more than two professional supervisory members, whose main task is to empower young therapists with their own experience and practical skills, helping them make rapid progress. When each new child enters the center, the supervisors conduct a thorough assessment of the child's abilities and develop a training program suitable for the child before guiding the therapists to intervene with the child.
ALSO-IN is currently divided into two types of classes, one is a continuous 180-minute intensive one-on-one intervention, in which a therapist takes the child by the hand for three consecutive hours, and the content of the teaching will cover language, socialization, cognition, gross motor, fine and self-care, and involve 30-40 goals, basically starting from the moment the child comes into contact with the teacher, the intervention is initiated. But it's not all "class" all the time. We organize desktop class time, play time, movement time, and interaction time according to the child's age and ability, combining work and play.
Another type of class is the interactive game class, usually 2 therapists, to 4-6 children, group class is actually a step-by-step process, the initial child in the one-on-one teaching to show a better degree of cooperation as well as the basic ability, and then gradually enter the 1 to 2 (joint training class), when the child in the two-person group environment can be observed to imitate the companion, and reflect a certain interactive social skills, then you can enter the 4 to 2 (joint training class), when the child can observe and imitate the companion, and reflects some interactive social skills, then you can enter the 4 to 2 (joint training class). When the child is able to observe and imitate his/her peers in a two-person group setting and demonstrates a certain level of social interaction, he/she is ready to move on to a group class of 4-6 people. The group classes are also designed to provide each child with a different training program to improve their ability to pay attention to people in a group setting, to follow group/individual directions in a variety of group settings, and to improve their socialization skills in a variety of group play situations.
ALSO-IN's group classes have a theme every month, hoping that the children's basic cognitive skills will be enhanced while socializing and interacting in games.
Compared with traditional organizations, we attach great importance to the use of data, because very often children are unable to express to their parents: "I learned this" or "Mom, I like this teacher", we have to use data records to determine whether the teaching is effective for the child, and whether the child's performance is good. We need to use the data records to determine whether the teaching is effective for the child, whether the child's progress rate is ideal, and whether the child's training program is reasonable. On the one hand, parents receive a daily report on their child's performance and training at the institution:
On the other hand, we want to enable families to form a synergy with the institution and intervene in parallel, so we give each parent homework for the day, so that parents can help to review and generalize what their child has mastered that day.
Through small at-home tasks that generalize and reinforce what was learned during the day, parents can go home knowing what to teach today and how to teach it, and they can be rewarded with medals for the skills their children have learned. We want intervention to be a happy, rational, and fulfilling process for families. No matter how well ALSO-IN does in the future, it's ultimately just a crutch that we'll have to throw away sooner or later, but being able to have a clear idea of what to expect every step of the way in the future through our time at the institution is the precursor to leaving the institution.
We have IEP meetings with parents every three months to ****talk with them about how their child's intervention is going, look for problems that have arisen during the intervention, and iterate and optimize their child's training program. Based on the data recorded on a daily basis, we can then form a very focused discussion to determine how much progress the child has made after a period of training at the ALSO-IN facility, how many skills were acquired at the facility, whether the rate of progress has become faster, whether the rehabilitation has become more efficient, whether the final outcome of the rehabilitation is in line with the initial expected judgment, and other goals.
But ALSO-IN is not perfect, and in the course of its development many new problems have arisen, both internally and externally - it's really not an easy thing to do, and parents always want experienced therapists, and therapists are a profession that requires constant learning and extremely stressful work! --But what we ask you to believe is that we have the determination to do it right. The ALSO team never avoids problems, and once we find them we work hard to explore and think of solutions, and invite the best experts in the field to participate in the development of the curriculum and the training of teachers.
It's hard to do it right, but we're confident we'll get it right in the end.
Your Life is ALSO my life!