Autism FAQ

• Children and youth at CHEO benefit from a multi-disciplinary team. We support children through services like dental, physiotherapy, audiology and more and collaborate to support your child across our teams.

• Many of our services are offered in a classroom-like group setting. This helps children get ready for a school environment, learn from their peers, practice social skills and make friends.

At CHEO, autism services are delivered in both group and 1:1 settings by a team of highly-trained, passionate and dedicated professionals.

• Instructor therapists: frontline staff who specialize in the use of applied behaviour analysis (ABA), which is used across CHEO’s Autism Program. Our staff have educational backgrounds in psychology and education.
• Speech language pathologists (SLP): professionals who specialize in communication (verbal and non-verbal) and language development. CHEO SLPs provide consultation and collaborate with your child’s clinical team as appropriate.
• Board certified behaviour analysts (BCBA): professionals who lead CHEO’s Autism Program clinical teams. They provide direct oversight to all assessments and treatment plans and support and supervise our instructor therapists.

Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is an evidence-based therapy for children, youth and adults with developmental disabilities like autism. ABA uses positive reinforcement and breaks down tasks into small pieces for easy learning. ABA also teaches communication through verbal, visual and other cues.

There are lots of different terms people use to describe this type of therapy: ABA, Intensive Behaviour Intervention (IBI), comprehensive and focused. They are all based on the same principles, the main difference is the intensity of the service provided.

Children and youth who receive less than 20 hours a week and typically work on 1-3 goals at a time, are receiving ABA or focused therapy. Those that receive more than 20 hours are receiving IBI or comprehensive therapy. These children work on many goals and often focus on changing their rate of learning.

Here are some CHEO-recommended resources on ABA principles:

www.autismontario.com

www.ontaba.org

When you call to register for service, CHEO’s registration staff will learn about your child or youth’s needs and will guide you so you can make a decision to meet your unique goals.

A CHEO Family Support Worker is also available to answer your questions. Please contact us at 613-249-9355 and ask to speak to a Family Support Worker.

CHEO is waiting for the government to announce a needs-based program before we determine what we can offer long-term. We remain committed to engaging families and the community at-large in open and transparent consultations about the future of CHEO’s autism programming, once we learn more about the government’s new plan.

At any time, we welcome feedback by email neurodevelopmentalhealth@cheo.on.ca or don’t hesitate to contact your child’s clinical team.