This New Diagnosis Hub has been developed to help parents in British Columbia put an intervention program in place for their child who has been newly diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (which we will refer to as autism). It is also helpful to families who may have received a diagnosis some time ago but are wanting to rethink their child’s program.
A diagnosis can be both a shock and a relief, even if a family has suspected for some time that their child has autism. ACT has many resources to help families through this process — you will find an overview on A Quick Overview of ACT’s Resources.
In order to apply for Autism Funding from MCFD, the parent or guardian must contact their local office for Children and Youth with Support Needs, part of the British Columbia Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD).
Find your local MCFD office for Children and Youth with Support Needs (CYSN) by contacting the Support Needs Contacts at MCFD.
When you call your local MCFD office, explain that your child has just received a diagnosis of autism and you would like to talk with a CYSN Intake Worker to apply for autism funding.
Move quickly! The month your local MCFD office receives your signed application, along with necessary documents, is the month your child’s funding will start to accrue. Remember to request an email confirmation after you submit all application related document, this can help you keep track on the process.
Look for your Autism Funding Agreement, in the mail, four to six weeks after you apply. The MCFD site has a list of forms you may need including the Autism Agreement.
Sign and return two copies of the agreement to the Autism Funding Program in Victoria within two weeks.
Connecting with a MCFD Children and Youth with Support Needs Worker
In B.C., Children and Youth with Support Needs (CYSN) workers specialize in helping families who have children with support needs access resources to care for their children.
Each child who receives autism funding is assigned a CYSN worker. CYSN workers can tell you what services are available in your community for your child, other than autism funding.
In order to build an effective treatment team, parents need to learn about autism and how it impacts their child. This is especially important in B.C., where parents decide who to hire and what to prioritize in terms of therapy — within the limits set by Autism Funding policy.
Best Practices in Autism Treatment
Many approaches to autism treatment share these “best practices”; they are supported by extensive research:
Intensive, direct one-to-one intervention at home, in preschool programs and in a variety of community settings on a year-round basis.
High levels of predictability and routine.
Highly supportive, structured teaching methods, based on the principles of applied behavior analysis (ABA), that incorporate a variety of strategies to help your child acquire, generalize, and maintain new skills.
Use of functional assessment and positive behavior support techniques to address problem behaviors.
Collaboration between therapists, including behavior consultants, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists (see Step three for details on these professionals).
Interaction with typical children in preschool or daycare settings.
Family involvement in development, implementation and review of intervention plans, and training in order to help their child progress.
Trained and adequately supervised staff (see step four for details on maintaining a strong team).
Regular, ongoing monitoring of the child’s progress by parents and professionals, and periodic reassessment and evaluation of the program.
Behavior Plan of Intervention
A behavior plan of intervention (BPI) is individualized to target areas where the child needs help. The initial plan also establishes a baseline — “where the child is now” — and sets goals. For more information, see the MCFD Parent’s Handbook page 25.
ACT’s Approach – Positive, Practical, Evidence-informed Support
ACT encourages parents to look carefully at approaches that are supported by research. No approach to autism treatment will have the same effect on all children — the causes of autism are complex and how it impacts each child varies significantly.
Search ACT’s Autism & Intellectual Disability Search, where ACT promotes resources that help parents improve the quality of their child’s and family’s life by targeting communications, social interaction and addressing concerns like anxiety.
Online Videos
ACT has professional quality videos online with the basics to help a family understand autism treatment.
It is vital children with autism develop routines for eating, sleeping, toileting and playing so that family life is manageable and fun. If your child has difficulty in any of these areas, make sure you ask for help to address them. It is possible to resolve these issues — they do not have to be endured just because your child has autism.
Step 3: Finding Professionals to Work with Your Family
The Registry of Autism Service Providers
The Registry of Autism Service Providers (RASP) is designed to ensure that parents of children with autism under six have access to service providers whose education and experience meets basic standards for early intervention. Only if the professional is on the RASP can parents have them reimbursed for their services using Autism Funding.
Parents of children six and over do not have to choose professionals from the RASP. However, parents of children across the age range and with a variety of special needs will find the information contained here useful when making decisions about hiring professional support.
Do not rely only on the advice of others, look at the RASP list and contact several professionals to help you research the best options for your child. Ask each professional to provide resume, conduct an interview to ask about the professional’s experience and skill, and check references before you make your decision on hiring or contracting with someone.
Agencies
ACT recommends that parents check carefully the professionals associated with an agency:
How many of them can work independently of supervision?
How closely supervised are consultants and behavior interventionists?
How many well-qualified professionals are associated with the agency?
If the agency does not have any professionals listed on the RASP, check that they still have staff with at least a Master’s degree to provide supervision to whoever is working with your child.
Be wary of situations where the behavior consultant is not taking an active role in your child’s program but is simply signing the invoices, while allowing an unqualified person to provide service with minimal supervision.
For Children under the Age of Six
Children under six receive $22,000 a year in funding that their families can use to pay for services, training and materials approved by the Autism Funding Unit. While this is a large sum, it can be used up very quickly unless families budget carefully. Families should also think of it as a time when they need to address their own training needs, so that when the funding drops to $6,000 a year when their child turns six, the family is better prepared to manage their child’s program.
Parents, siblings and the extended family are the core of the team
Children with autism are complicated; it often takes a team of people to understand how to engage him or her at first. Parents have crucial information but they need encouragement to build their skills and their confidence so they can learn how to help their child. This is important because parents are there for the long-haul and can have an amazing impact when they are given the tools. Siblings too, are powerful allies; they need to be provided with age-appropriate information on their sibling with special needs, as does the entire family.
RASP Professionals
If the child is under six, the following professionals must be selected from the Registry of Autism Service Providers (RASP) list, in order to use Autism Funding:
Behavior Consultant/Analyst (BC)*: Specializes in assessment and development of goals and instructional strategies to target a wide range of skills across all areas of development, including communication, social and daily living skills. BCs also conduct Functional Behavior Assessments and design programs to address challenging behaviours. In most cases, the BC develops a detailed plan of intervention (BPI), trains and supervises BIs on how to implement the plan, and works collaboratively with family members and other members of the therapy team.
Speech-language pathologist (S-LP): Specializes in assessing and treating a child’s speech, language and social communication difficulties. They can work directly with a child or provide consultation to the team providing ideas on how to target specific communication and social challenges.
Occupational therapist (OT): Provides assessment, diagnosis and treatment in the area of functional living skills including play, dressing, feeding, school readiness skills, printing, keyboarding and social skills.
Physical therapist (PT): Provides assessment and intervention that focus on the prevention, identification and easing of movement challenges. They can either provide direct treatment or consult to the team.
*Behavior Analysts are certified by the U.S.-based Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB) following a series of courses and a period of supervised practice. Behavior Consultants who have this advanced certification will be listed as either BCBA or BCaBA under Certification on the RASP list.
Behavior Interventionist (BI)
BIs are not on the Registry of Autism Service Providers, but they can invoice the Autism Funding. BIs work one-on-one with your child on goals outlined in the behavior plan of intervention (BPI), developed by professionals on your team. BIs may work in the home, school, or community. It is very important that BIs are supervised by Behavior Consultants. Without supervision, BIs are not competent to deal with challenging situations and are not able to maximize the impact of a BPI.
For Children Six and Over
The average age of a child when diagnosed with autism in B.C is seven years of age. Many parents are very distressed when diagnosis is delayed, concerned that their child will not have the opportunity to progress. However, research demonstrates that children and adults with autism continue to progress, especially when they have good support at home and school. Many parents report significant progress year after year, well into adulthood, even for children who received a diagnosis in their teens.
For school-age children, Autism Funding is intended to cover a variety of services and resources outside of the child’s school day.
It is not a requirement to hire a professional from the Registry of Autism Service Providers (RASP) for children six and over, but it is an excellent starting point.
Working with older children requires a different skill set than working with very young children, but it is still advisable that whoever is providing you professional support is supervised by someone who has at least a Master’s degree in a related discipline like psychology or special education.
Mental Health Issues – Anxiety and Depression
Children with a late diagnosis can often be complex, which sometimes explains why they were not diagnosed much earlier. An area to keep a careful eye on is mental health, especially anxiety and depression. ACT has many resources we are pleased to share. There are videos available free on AVA – Autism Videos @ ACT. Also, the AID has numerous resources on mental health.
Direct Funding Option
If your child is 12 years or older, MCFD provides the option of Direct Payment Funding, after the family has “successfully managed” Invoice Payments for at least two full years. Funding will be provided directly to the parent or guardian at the beginning of the child’s funding period. For more information on the requirements please contact MCFD Autism Funding team.
The Autism Funding Unit has strict rules about what families can spend Autism Funding on. For example, vitamins, special foods, services provided out-of-province, and renovations of the family home are not accepted.
For more information contact Autism Information Services BC at 1-844-878-4700
Quick Tip – Keep a Record!
Track all your contacts with MCFD CYSN workers, Autism Funding Unit and all service providers.
ACT recommends that when you have received advice from Autism Funding Unit that you type up your understanding of the instructions and either email or upload the message in My Family Service portal to the AFU to confirm that you are on the right track.
ACT’s Autism Manual
For more detailed information on the roles of all these professionals and para-professionals, see ACT’s Autism Manual for B.C.:
If you have questions or concern regarding resources and support within the public school system, or alternatives, these chapters from ACT’s Autism Manual are relevant:
Step 4: Hiring and Contracting with a Service Provider
Important considerations before hiring a professional
Although the government of B.C. is providing the funding for a child’s program, it is the parent who takes responsibility for spending the funds wisely. Essentially, the parent is entering into a private contract with a service provider.
Do not rush into signing a contract.
Take the time to meet with a few professionals to speak with them directly about the services and programs they are able to provide. Meeting face-to-face with a potential service provider helps to decide who will be the best fit for your child and family.
Willthe approach to treatment work for your family?
Be cautious when providers insist that their approach works for all children.
Consider:
Are they listening to your family’s priorities?
How many direct hours of intervention for your child does their program provide?
What are the costs?
Are you expected to implement the strategies with little direct support?
Do you have financial resources to contribute to funding the program, in addition to Autism Funding?
If you are a single-parent or a low-income family you will need to consider carefully the full financial picture.
If you are a two-parent family, do you both work? How much time can you contribute to managing the people coming into your home to provide therapy?
Is there a centre-based program which offers a better fit?
Make sure you understand the contract.
The contract should outline both the service provider’s responsibilities as well as the parent’s obligations. See Chapter 5 from ACT’s Autism Manual for B.C., “Contracting with Professionals on the RASP”— it provides further information on the importance of signing a contract and the details it should include.
Require a monthly invoice.
Many families become distressed when they realize that their child’s autism funding account has been emptied more quickly than planned because they gave a blanket permission to invoice the child’s account and did not track the invoices each month:
Require a monthly invoice and review it carefully; it should be sent to you at the same time it is sent to the Autism Funding Branch.
Set limits in the contract on how much can be debited each month.
Require written authorization for services which are above the limits set in the contract.
ACT’s Autism Manual
ACT’s Autism Manual for B.C.: Chapter 5 – Contracting with Professionals on the RASP – The Importance of a Contract (page 1) – Timesheets & Invoices (page 6) – Terminology and Billable Item Descriptions (page 8)
Treat all members with respect and encourage ongoing, clear and positive communication.
Submit invoice forms to the Autism Funding Unit right away to assist in getting your service providers paid as soon as possible.
Comply with B.C. Employment Standards if anyone working with your child is considered an employee.
Once your family’s intervention team is hired, it is important to remember your role as the parent and leader of your team. Be proactive:
Meet regularly with team members, and encourage communications
Focus on whether your child is making improvement
Review the information recorded by team members
Review your child’s needs and communicate them to the team
Consider whether you are seeing progress in meeting the goals set out in the Behavior Plan of Intervention
Submit invoice forms to the Autism Funding Unit right away so your service providers are paid as soon as possible.
Re-evaluate, if necessary, whether the team members are a proper fit for your child
Addressing Concerns
As of July 1, 2017, MCFD is taking over management of the Registry of Autism Service Providers and will be the first point of contact for complaints from parents and guardians regarding the service provided by Behavior Consultants, Occupational Therapists, Speech-Language Pathologists and Physical Therapists.
For individualized support, please contact:
Autism Information Service British Columbia (AIS BC) Toll Free Line: 1-844-878-4700 Email: [email protected] Website: gov.bc.ca/autism
The Behavior Consultant (BC) never asked about your family’s priorities in terms of the functional skills you wish to prioritize.
You are charged every month for the BC’s services, but he or she rarely sees your child.
The BC rarely or never observes the Behavior Interventionist either in person or by video.
Your child has not made any discernable progress since the program started a year ago.
All therapy is being done in a separate room; you are not encouraged to observe or coached on how to help your child use his or her new skills. For example, if he or she is learning to identify colours, you should be taught how to reinforce this from breakfast to bath time!
Next Steps
Parental support and involvement is an important part of your child’s development. See step 6 for training and learning opportunities for your family and the members of your team.
Step 6: Continuing to Learn about Autism and your Child
Workshops and Training – Live, Web Streaming and Online!
As children with autism develop and grow through different stages in life, parents often need new strategies. To equip you with positive, practical strategies ACT offers a variety of training opportunities, live, web streamed and online, relevant to autism and other special needs, including:
Social Skills
Toilet Training
Puberty and Adolescence
Recreation & Children with ASD
Positive Behavior Support
Transition to Adulthood
Workshops and conferences are also a great opportunity to meet people who share your interests and to find out about new developments in research.
ACT provides online information and training resources to families and professionals.
Online Resources
Online Videos – Autism Videos @ ACT provide expert, practical insights on a range of topics; available on your computer on your schedule; professionally filmed and edited. Free!
Residents of B.C. can search by their postal code for autism-friendly services across the province.
ACT’s Autism Manual for B.C. A manual for B.C. parents and professionals, includes chapters on the diagnostic process, developing a treatment team, MCFD-funded services and a glossary of terms and a helpful guide to acronyms.
ACT is constantly developing new resources. We also keep parents and professionals in touch with developments within the autism community across B.C. and beyond. To receive ACT’s Monthly News Round-Up and event announcements by email, sign-up here.
The core information around funding policy in translation still holds true, but some information is outdated, for example: the fee guidelines [page 22].
