My son was recently diagnosed with ASD. Are most Daycares or Preschools equipped to deal with children with ASD?
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I don't work in daycares or preschool, but my school is kindergarden to grade 5. Just talking about my school here, I think they are somewhat equipped, but it could be better. When we do have a student that has been diagnosed with ASD, the school district makes sure that this child has a teacher's aid (don't know what they are call in other province) with him in class and on the school yard. There's a lot of follow up with all the professional that are working with the child.
I won't lie - most are not trained for any special needs cases. It depends on the center though. In ours, 3 of us have taken slightly more in depth training and are a bit more knowledgeable than some others.
Can you get any sort of therapy for him? I don't think he's at that point yet is he? For our more "severe" cases, we have one-on-one workers - some from another agency, for the preschool aged kids (Early Intervention type thing), and others are people we've hired.
I'd make sure you give the DCP as much information as possible - knowledge is power in cases like this!
If he starts using things like the Pecs program, or anything else, then make them aware and get them on board.
Most DCPs would be willing to do a little extra if it helps the child - but they can't help if they don't know what he needs so don't be scared to educate them!
Early Childhood Education in college offers one class in special needs training and that one semester is supposed to cover everything from ASD, to ADHD, to FAS and learning disabilities. This was a huge disappointment for me, so I have taken a number of additional courses on my own time to educate myself farther. Most daycare's have many services available to them, it is whether or not they choose to use those services and fill out the required paperwork. Sadly I have worked at many who don't bother. That being said, I make it a point to know every service in my area and have lists of people to call in every circumstance. within 24 hours of my latest ASD sweetheart enrolling we had appointments with Grandview for speech and language therapy, behaviour management therapists and a representative from Autism Ontario coming in to offer us training.
I attended a fantastic workshop on Structured teaching for ASD children today. Once I put some of the ideas into place at my centre, I hope to write an article about the benefits.