The Evaluation of Children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder: Adaptations to Accommodate a Telepractice Model of Clinical Care

Abstract

Telepractice is increasingly applied to assessment and intervention for persons with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and the use of telepractice for delivering augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) services is expanding. To date, no studies have focused on the assessment of communication in children with ASD who are minimally verbal. This case exploration represents a first attempt to apply the clinical assessment approach (also known as Visual Immersion System) developed in the Autism Language Program in the Center for Communication Enhancement (CCE) at Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) through a telepractice service delivery model. In this paper we detail an on-site evaluation, and then describe the application of the various evaluation components to telepractice delivery. Our findings provide preliminary evidence that communication assessment information can be successfully obtained for this population via telepractice. The results demonstrated that the telepractice evaluation took greater time to complete than the on-site evaluation, likely due to both technical and cultural factors. Further study is warranted particularly in the delivery of family instruction materials prior to the evaluation and to quality assurance measures.