Our personalised and holistic approach is tailored to the specific needs of each child. For each child or young person, we draw an individualised educational plan which is based upon their personal strengths and interests, and takes into account their specific strengths and challenges.
Common bases for ASD-specialist educational provision at the CTSA
At CTSA, we observe, assess and take into account the abilities and special needs of children and young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We offer a varied academic programme, based on their current and emerging skills, to project new skills and build targets for the individualised educational plan. We pay particular attention to each pupil and student’s interests and sensory preferences, as they can serve as starting points for new competencies, abilities and knowledge. We offer learning situations that resemble real life situations and are motivating and stimulating, so as to develop, step by step, their social participation and independence.
In line with pupils’ needs related to communication – expressive and receptive, we provide different types of aids and support:
- physical aids: hand-guiding, initiating actions, guiding by the shoulders;
- visual aids: use of tangible real-life objects, photographs, pictograms and other symbols (cf. Mayer-Johnson’s “Boardmaker v7”), key-words, procedures and/or aide-mémoires;
- gestural aids: sign language, gestures such as pointing, adopting certain postures or facial expressions (cf. “Gebärden-Lexikon”, Maisch, 1994);
- verbal aids: cues by asking questions, giving additional instructions, stressing words or parts of words, giving clues.
Our staff is trained in alternative, augmentative communication (AAC) tools, as well as the TEACCH®, PECS® methods and DIR-Floortime® model. Those educational and rehabilitative models are specifically designed to support social interaction and communication, as well independent life skills in children and young people with an ASD.
We work in close relationship with families, to support development of functional forms of communication and behaviour to which certain pupils with an ASD, not only in educational settings but also at home and in recreational settings. We analyze the young people’s behaviour and try to expand new appropriate forms of communication and occupations with them, and we encourage pupils to stay in the interaction rather than withdraw or become more and more emotionally and sensorially dysregulated.