Dr. Chris’ Autism Journal

 NEW YORK, NY (Dec 12, 2007) – Autism Speaks, the nation’s leading autism advocacy organization, today announced its Autism Treatment Network (ATN) would triple in size, expanding from five sites to fifteen sites across the United States and Canada. The ATN is a group of hospitals and medical centers dedicated to improving medical care for children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and to standardizing the care those individuals receive.

The ATN’s multi-disciplinary approach includes collaboration among specialists in areas including, but not limited to, neurology, developmental pediatrics, child psychiatry, psychology, gastroenterology, genetics, metabolic disorders, and sleep disorders. The network aims to develop common clinical standards for medical care for individuals with ASD and to increase the pool of autism medical specialists through trainee mentorship and outreach to community-based physicians. As part of this effort, families receiving care at the sites can participate in a data registry that tracks children and adolescents receiving ongoing care at participating sites. The information in the database is a crucial part of developing the evidence to create and substantiate these clinical consensus standards.

“It is imperative that all children, no matter where they live, have access to excellent, evidence-based medicine,” said Autism Speaks President Mark Roithmayr. “The continuing expansion and funding of the ATN is a significant step in that direction.”

“This dramatic expansion of the Autism Treatment Network provides real opportunity to improve the quality of health care that children and youth with autism receive, and for more children to receive that care,” said Dr. James Perrin, Director, Clinical Coordinating Center, ATN, and Director, General Pediatrics, Massachusetts General Hospital for Children. “Developing common standards of medical care across fifteen sites will allow us to get answers to the questions parents ask about their children’s care much more quickly.”

The participating ATN sites are: University of Arkansas and Arkansas Children’s Hospital (Little Rock, AR); Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program Northern California (San Jose, CA); University of Colorado Denver, School of Medicine and The Children’s Hospital (Denver, CO); Kennedy Krieger Institute and Marcus Institute (Baltimore, MD/Atlanta, GA); LADDERS/Mass General Hospital (Boston, MA); University of Missouri (Columbia, MO); Columbia University Medical Center (New York, NY); University of Rochester (Rochester, NY); Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (Cincinnati, OH); Bloorview Kids Rehab, Surrey Place Centre and The Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto, ON, Canada); Oregon Health & Science University (Portland, OR); University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA); Vanderbilt University Medical School (Nashville, TN); Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX); University of Washington (Seattle, WA).

The ATN began as a collaboration between the Northwest Autism Foundation in Oregon and Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston. In 2005, the network was established with five founding sites that came together to establish multi-disciplinary practices for the evaluation and treatment of the underlying medical conditions associated with ASD. These sites currently provide services to approximately 2,000 new cases of ASD each year, and all have taken critical steps to broaden the services available to all children in these centers. The Autism Treatment Network merged with Cure Autism Now in 2006. In February 2007, Cure Autism Now merged with Autism Speaks.

To find out more about the Autism Treatment Network, or to get connected to a site in your area, visit www.autismspeaks.org/science/programs/atn/index.php or email: atn@autismspeaks.org.

The above article is reprinted with permission and can be found in its entirety at http://www.autismspeaks.org/press/atn_network_expanded.php

Timo is a friendly animated tutor who helps children with autism, hearing impairments, developmental delays and other language problems to learn communication, conversation and reading in fun computer programs.  Animated Speech’s software is designed to give speech pathologists, educators and parents who work with these children an important new tool to build comprehension and vocabulary skills.

The initial concept for Timo was developed by Dr. Dom Massaro and Dr. Michael Cohen with a grant from the National Science Foundation.  Originally, Timo was called Baldi, and the once university lab project soon became a commercially available product.  Dan Feschbach, the company’s CEO, has grown the company and they now have 3 products available for varying levels of language learning. 

Team Up With Timo: Vocabulary teaches identification, comprehension, and expression of more than 650 words including animals, human body, weather and much more.  The program offers pre and post tests for assessing progress and has 6 other levels of learning to teach the vocabulary.  The unique aspect of this program is Timo, who engages the child in conversation using the child’s own name!  The child’s voice can also be recorded so that the child’s parents and other team members can review it after the child’s session.  Rewards are given in response to correct answers and include a large variety of brief animations.  This program has many options for customization and is best for early language learners through about 4th grade vocabulary.

If you are looking for more customization, ASC also offers Team Up With Timo: Lesson Creator.  In this program, teachers and professionals and create custom vocabulary and language lessons for the child to do on the computer.  You can use any pictures you want including the ones in the Timo vault, or upload your own.  This is an excellent way to build individualized, personalized lessons for your child. 

For older children or for children who have more language skills, they have Team Up With Timo: Stories, designed by Dr. Lauren Franke and Pamela Connors, speech-language experts.  This program teaches listening skills, comprehension, vocabulary, retelling stories, and reading skills.  Research has shown that being able to retell a story at age 4 is predictive of later success in school.  Storytelling also helps children participate in daily life with friends, family and school.  This program is based on research in language development and uses the Narrative-based language intervention (NBLI) approach that combines storytelling with skill-based activities.   

Timo products are available online and a free trial is provided.

With the success of our first program, TeachTown: Basics, we were getting very antsy to start our next product to help school-age children with autism.  We are thrilled to announce that we have received a Department of Education Stepping Stones Technology grant to develop our next product and to do the initial research to help make this product effective, appropriate, and of the highest quality.  Stayed tuned for further updates about this upcoming product, we are anticipating using the new program with children starting in 2008!

To read more about our exciting news, check out the press release at: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=69034

Continue checking back to this site and the TeachTown website for announcements and opportunities to participate in our research and development process.

The cost of treatment for children with autism is so high, and even if you are lucky enough to find a good intervention for your child, it is hard to get the money. 

In case you were thinking that nobody out there wants to help, check out this organization, Angel, Inc., who provides grants to individual families who have children with autism to get help with treatment!

I thought this was such a great thing to offer families, but you have to live in Wisconsin.  Funding is for up to $500 and you can apply quarterly!

For those of you who think TeachTown might be a good fit for your child, this is more than enough to cover an annual subscription!

They also provide education and networking for families who have children with autism.

You can help with this great cause by buying your Avon products through www.youravon.com/jmongillo and 20% will be donated to Angels, Inc. to help more families. 

If you know about other organizations like this in other states, please post here to let others know!

When looking for a behavioral consultant, it is really important that you look at the qualifications of that person, particularly at the supervision level.

The California Association of Behavior Analysis provides a useful article about how to find a behavioral consultant: http://www.calaba.org/AAMR-BehConsultantsFlyer.pdf.

Here is another excellent article about finding a behavioral consultant from Community Gateway: http://communitygateway.org/faq/behavioral.htm

The Behavior Analyst Certification Board is the first organization to provide national certification credentials for behavioral consultants.  When you see BCBA or BCABA after someone’s name, this assures you that the person has completed the required number of hours, supervision, education, and passing the national board exam.  If you would like to know if someone has these credentials, you can look them up on the BACB site!  This is a great place to start looking for someone to help you with a home program that lives in your state.