One of the biggest challenges for parents of autistic children is finding helpful therapies and resources. The Laurel Autism Family Project will assist parents of autistic children in finding helpful therapies and programs for their child’s specific needs.
The Survey
Information is gathered anonymously from parents regarding their child’s behaviours, current therapies, and the parent’s/caregiver’s perception of the helpfulness of each therapy.
Data Analysis
The program sorts the information provided by families into clusters of children of the same age with similar autistic characteristics, and then sorts the therapies used according to their helpfulness.
Once the survey is completed, a list of relevant therapies and resources is made available to families. Only evidence-based therapies are listed, and every effort is made to provide as many on-line resources as possible to accommodate families who do not have access to resources or who live in remote areas. Seeing what other families have found beneficial can help parents choose therapies and programs for their own child.
Note that this is not intended to rate the effectiveness of individual therapies, but to identify therapies that other families have found helpful for their child’s specific needs.
There is no cost to participate in the project and strict protocols are in place to ensure all data is protected to maintain anonymity. The aim of the project is to identify the most helpful program(s) for individual profiles, and to connect families with free resources to assist/support/promote in their child’s development.