Language disorders are considered part of the symptoms of the autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by all available criteria. Some descriptions include communication impairments as one of the diagnostic criteria for ASD.
Providing language therapy services to children with ASD in countries such as Brazil involves several challenges:
- The vast geographic and social-cultural diversity demands continuous adaptations to meet the needs of children and families in different contexts;
- There are not enough professionals with adequate training to provide consistent diagnosis, therapeutic and educational services;
- Educational and social services are not prepared to receive and adapt their services to children and adolescents with ASD.
Therefore university-related services have a fundamental role in filling these gaps.
This presentation describes the various initiatives by such a service is São Paulo, one of the world`s largest metropolitan areas.
This specialized service provides language assessment, diagnosis and weekly therapy to children with ASD since 1986.
ASD`s complexity demands the inclusion of activities such as:
- multi-professional collaboration;
- interdisciplinary research;
- out-reaching and mentoring of teachers with children and adolescents with ASD in their classes;
- systematic meetings with parents;
- use of tele-health resources to increase the number of services provided to this population;
- editing and distribution of brochures to improve the awareness about ASD and
development of assessment tools adapted to the Brazilian reality.
These initiatives are conducted within the context of scientific research, therefore providing elements to evidence-based-practice.
Many of the researches are associated to Master and Doctorate projects and were published in scientific journals.
During this period, since 1986, many professionals had their specialized training and are now teaching in other universities.
Today 90 children and adolescents attend to weekly language therapy sessions and 12 undergraduate, 8 graduate students, 3 post-doctorate and 2 researchers comprise the team.
