Target Audience: Para Professionals, Special Educators
Autism is a neurodivergence that impacts a learner’s social and communication skills and behavior. About 30% of Autistic children have augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) needs past age 5 (Tager-Flusberg, & Kasari, 2013). These learners present with such unique strengths and challenges that a team of professionals is needed to help them meet their potential. Teamwork is required to meet the challenge of helping Autistic learners to generalize skills across environments. Collaboration between speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and ABA professionals will be discussed. The strengths of each discipline will be compared along with difficulties faced when professionals “don’t get along.” Finally, ideas will be shared to promote collaboration including establishing a shared framework, learning each field’s professional jargon, moving towards common terminology, and focusing on the data to ensure efficacy of treatment and generalization of language skills. A successful clinical example will be shared in which an occupational therapist, ABA therapists, and SLPs collaborated to teach school-aged learners in a social skills group.
Learning Outcomes: Participants will:
Name the challenges professionals from different fields face when working together to serve Autistic students with AAC needs.
Discuss ways that collaboration between professionals can help promote generalization of language skills by Autistic learners.
Explain at least two strategies that can promote collaboration between professionals when serving neurodivergent students with AAC needs.
