Assesments for school | Autism PDD

Have any of your children had a functional behavioral assessment? What about a functional vision assesment? Can you tell me about them?

Thanks!

Now some schools do drag their feet on the functional behaviour assessments. If there is no functional behaviour assessment plan in place they can suspend the child for up to 10 days. Once you have the functional behaviour plan they then have to go by the plan before even getting to the suspension. And there is a bunch of paperwork involved in these plans so you might find some teachers that just don't want to do the paperwork.Thanks Tabitha! I truly think the school is dragging its feet in any assessments, because I KNOW that they will show my son needs special help, not just put in a regular classroom to learn by observation.Thanks, I appreciate the input.

Thanks for the great link. If anyone is interested, here are some more links and a basic definition of what I have been told the school needs to do for my child. I took him to a Ped Opth and she said his ability to see is ok, but I was advised that this assessment can tell us what degree (if any) of difficulty my son is having in using his vision in day to day life. Every day, I learn something new. When I got the Ped Opth check, I thought I was done with vision. Now I feel badly that I havent had this done for my son.

Functional vision assessment:	An assessment of a student's use of vision in a variety of tasks and settings, including measures of near and distance vision, visual fields, eye movements, and responses to specific environmental characteristics, such as light and color. The assessment report includes recommendations for instructional procedures, modifications or adaptations, and additional tests.
Functional vision:	The ability to use vision in planning and performing a task.

http://www.autism.org/interview/kaplan.html

http://www.islrr.org/Vision02/428.html

http://www.bctf.bc.ca/TeachingToDiversity/ResourceInventory/ SN-LA-IDs.html

I've not had a "functional" behavioral assessment, but many "adaptive" BAs, and I think they're quite diff't. I did a search to see if they were the same, and found this... http://www.aspennj.org/function.html

As for visual....I wonder if you mean "Visual-Motor Processing" or "Visual-Spatial" assessment? I know those are (or were in our case) done as part of the OT assessments and they psych administrated WISC-IV and Stanford-Binet.

Sorry I can't be of more help...
~Lesley

Jeffrey had a functional behaviour assessment. Those do take time to do. They collect data, look at the behaviour in school, see if there are any triggers, talk to the parents, does anything trigger behaviours at home, etc. It takes awhile to have one done. Then you have a meeting on the assessment done and the steps the school will take under the behaviour modification plan. Here the plans are good for three years.

Thank you Jean for some really wonderful information here. We just went through a vision check ourselves, as Riley kept failing the eye exams...here's what I figured out when I went with him for the test...they had him "read this line", "I can't", "read this line", "I can't", "read this line", his response, "Leopard"...well the letters were L P R E D....this shows how literal he is, you TOLD him to read ... he couldn't make sense of the letters until these letters, so now at least we understand why he couldn't pass the exam.

Anyway, Riley ended up with reading glasses, and we're watching for "nearsightedness"....OK, so he can't see close and he can't see far, but he's OK in between???? I'm so confused about this...he does notice that the "words are bigger" with the glasses, but I don't know if it's a function of how the test was given as opposed to how he's able to answer the questions (receptive and expressive language are not strong) or WHAT?!?! I shouldn't forget to mention that last year we were watching for "farsightedness" what the heck is going on!?!?!

Thanks again,
~Lesley

Wow...that Dr. Kaplan interview is fascinating! It's definitely something I need to look into after reading it.
Thanks again Jean! :)

Wow! I never even THOUGHT about vision. After reading that link, it makes more sense to me. Now I hafta find an eye doctor that specializes in visual assessment for autism. I didn't KNOW they had specialists in THAT field. Do we first take our child to his pediatrician? AJ is just starting to drag his left toe. I sure hope i can FIND a specialist here...would be nice if they weren't too far away, but i highly doubt that is possible. (lol) I don't even know where to start actually. However, I will bring it up to my hubby's attention and see what he has to say. Thank you soooooooo much for sharing that knowledge! I am still rather in awe over here.

I talked to his speech therapists today. She said she has heard of visual assessment. She did bring up a really good point, though. She asked how AJ would be able to even say one way or another on what he sees or feels as he is non verbal. Perhaps that will be the next step after speech.

Screeech_200138601.7629398148Lesley, Thank you so much for your story aboit your son- WOW!!!!!! He fits oerfectly, into what the Mommy was telling me that our children sometimes face, and why she strongly recommends this functional vision test. Your son can see (perhaps?) the letters, it is just that to him they make no sense. Then when he saw letters that almost spelled leopard- he corrected the inaccuracy and came up with leopard. OMG!!!!!!!!!!!! that makes perfect sense to me now!!!!!!!!!!!!This mommy told me that an OT does the test and it can determine if certain accomodations would help the child to better be able to participate in his / her education. I am sorry that I know so little about it, I bet more folks here can explain, share links, etc..
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