Recent news has revealed that ‘thousands of families feel trapped in the turmoil of the UK education system’, as both mainstream and special schools reach breaking point.

As a huge advocate for the SEN community and an ABA Therapy provider in London, we feel this news at our very core.

In England, two-thirds of special schools were at or over capacity last year. With rising diagnoses of SEND, both special and mainstream schools are in a precarious position.

In Sierra Leone, there exists a pervasive stigma and false belief system surrounding children with special needs.

Our founder, Georgiana Koyama, was honoured and celebrated on 21st February 2024, for her passion, dedication and tireless work spent on advocating for equality and autism acceptance across the globe.

With a new team of dedicated and qualified SEN tutors, All Behaviour Consultancy are thrilled to offer a unique online learning experience through Zoom, where we combine Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), Positive Behaviour Support (PBS), and personalised tutoring to create an individualised 12-week program.

The best way to deal with challenging behaviour is to create an environment that reduces the chances of it happening.

When motivation is high, it allows for a calm session.

Our approach to supporting your child is in line with your goal of ensuring his/her happiness above all else. So, his/her entire behavioural programming is based on this.

As this term comes to a close and we prepare to break for school holidays many feel relief, but for some, this transition may evoke worry, fear, and restlessness due to a change in routine. 

Restrictive and Repetitive Behaviour’ is one of the key pillars that makes up the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder as noted by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 2013 and can play a big role in making transitions for Autistic people. For these individuals, leaving school for two weeks may not have the same excitement attached to others due to the fact it disrupts the routine they rely on.

ABA therapy is the most widely researched intervention for autism. With 40 years of scientific research on Applied Behaviour Analysis, it’s a structured, scientific approach that improves social skills, communication, self-care and learning skills.

If you’re a parent of a child with learning disabilities or autism, you may be struggling to manage your child’s behaviour at home.

Or perhaps you’re going through the process of diagnosis, and feeling overwhelmed and stressed with the potential challenges you may be facing.

One of them is deciding how to best support your child and this is how you most likely came across this blog.

First of all, you and your child will meet a Board-Certified Behaviour Analyst who will gather as much information as possible about your child.

(Always make sure you are working with a BACB-credited ABA Specialist).

This will be done through an interview and a formal assessment such as The Verbal Behavior Milestones Assessment and Placement Program (VB-MAPP) which assesses the language, learning and social skills of your child.

This assessment will provide crucial information about your child’s current level of skills, and areas of strength, as well as highlighting areas where your child needs support. Based on the assessment, targets specific to your child’s needs will be set.

ACT is recognised by the National Institute of Health- National Registry of evidence-based practices and is supported by over 300 peer-review journal articles.

In simple terms, ACT tells us to “Live a rich, full, meaningful life with less struggle.”

ACT suggests that we should avoid using or teaching strategies that attempt to suppress, control or eliminate negative thoughts. Instead, ACT teaches us to practice accepting these negative thoughts and feelings and suggests alternative ways of interacting with them.

In response to these uncertain times, All Behaviour Consultancy has created ‘ABC Connect‘. ABC Connect is a platform where we support and help families with Autistic children using online video sessions. Families will have the opportunity to have a range of different packages to support them and their ASD child from a distance, including regular consultations and parent training. As parents, we wish to have unlimited time with our children where we don’t have to worry about having to leave them to go to work. In a way, this seems like a good opportunity for us to bond and reconnect with our children in the way many of us imagined if we didn’t have life contingencies to play with

We had fun meeting the members of our social skills club. After introductions, we kicked off our session by asking members to brainstorm a name for the club (let’s face it social skills group is so not cool). All of them came up with really good ideas and at the end, they voted for ”THE ACADEMY UNION CLUB”, which is now the official name of the club.

I founded All Behaviour Consultancy on the premise that all individuals who require support with social, emotional and behavioural needs to be able to access evidence-based therapy, irrespective of their socioeconomic background. As a team, we have continued to build on this mission.

April is Autism Awareness month. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder and is characterised by delays in the development of social, language and communication skills. Other common neurodevelopmental disorders include Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. As we have seen the assessment and support for children with neurodevelopmental disorders grow over the past years (Constantino & Charman, 2016), we wanted to the highlight the importance of assessments for adults who may not have been diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder, and subsequently are not accessing services they require.

ACT discusses six core principles that can help people defuse these negative constructs by changing the function of these (defusion), and working on committed actions towards their values.

This approach is diverse and can help a wide range of children and adults including those, but not limited to, Autism, ADHD, Social Emotional Behavioural Disorders and those with problems with their mental health.

Precision Teaching focuses on four main principles which are

• The child/learner knows best

• Focus on observable behaviours and describe these using pinpoints

• Use frequency measurements

We love these principles at All Behaviour Consultancy. We always adopt a person-centred approach and aim to focus on the person and the environment.

We wholeheartedly believe that the child knows best, which means that if the individual is not learning, then it is due to the environment or the teaching methods.

“Parents of children with suspected autism are having to wait at least 44 months for a diagnosis, prompting a cross-party group of more than 140 MPs to write to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, demanding urgent action”, taken from an article in the Guardian. Read the full article here.

How many more findings like this is it going to take for the Government to accept that just as early diagnosis for many other medical and neurological disorders (e.g Cancer, Alzheimers, Stroke) saves and improves the quality of life, as well as being a key predictor of positive outcomes children with Autism?

Seeing that the average wait time for an Autism diagnosis is 44 months, drew me to pull up data from one of the children we work with.

For many of us, Christmas is one of the highlights of our year. It is shared in such a way that the celebrations around it (street lights, music on the radio, decorated homes) cannot be missed! However, for some people, Christmas can be anxiety provoking or a time of deep sadness for those who feel the absence of loved ones. For some individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders (such as Autism), Christmas can be hugely difficult and challenging for them and their families.

With food refusal being considered a normal part of typical development, how do you know if you have a fussy eater or a food refuser?

If you have a child with a diagnosis of a neurodevelopmental disorder without any other medical conditions such as cleft palate, cerebral palsy, or problems with their kidneys or intestines, the chances are that you are dealing with food refusal. Children with neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism are 40-80% more likely to experience food-related disorders such as food refusal than those without neurodevelopmental disorders (Chatoor, 2002).

We thought you would find this Q&A with one of our clients useful.

Here’s a good example of how we can help:-

What difficulties were you experiencing with your child? Extreme anxiety around formal learning and unable to attend school.

How did you hear about ABC? (ie. recommendation)Through another parent that I met at the Lambeth Parent Forum

How long has the ABC team been working with you? The team started just before Christmas 2016