Why Another Model for Supporting the Development of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders?

Another reasonable line of questioning is “Why do we need another model for supporting the development of children with ASD? Isn’t there already enough confusion for both families and professionals with all that is available?” The SCERTS Model was developed to address a number of needs, based on our training in a broad range of approaches, intimate working knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches and our years of experience consulting to both families and programs using a range of approaches. The model is designed to directly fill a void based on what we perceive as the major gaps in current service provision and, in some cases, the philosophical and practical fragmentation underlying practices used with children with ASD and their families. Furthermore, as noted previously, an expert panel on educational interventions for children with ASD (NRC, 2001) indicated that there is a clear need for the development and testing of new and innovative educational models for children with ASD, based on the panel’s findings of a number of limitations of currently available models. Therefore, the SCERTS Model has been developed as a next-generation model for working with children with ASD to address the acknowledged limitations of available models.

Basic Tenets of Recommended Practices Underlying the SCERTS Model

The SCERTS Model is based on close to 3 decades of our research and clinical/scholarly work published in more than 120 journal articles and chapters, two edited books, clinical assessment instruments, and four professional journal issues edited by us. The model is grounded in a number of basic tenets of recommended practices (Prizant & Rubin, 1999; Wetherby & Prizant, 1999). These recommended practices are consistent with the recommendations of the committee that investigated educational interventions for children with autism (NRC, 2001):

• An educational approach should directly address the core developmental challenges of children with ASD. The first critical need we address with the SCERTS Model is clearly delineating the developmental foundations of a comprehensive educational model for children with ASD. The identification in the model of these developmental foundations (i.e., Social Communication, Emotional Regulation, and Transactional Support) results in clearly stated educational priorities to guide goals as well as teaching practices.

• An educational approach for young children with ASD should be based on current knowledge of child development. The SCERTS Model at its very core is a developmental model. Goals and teaching strategies are derived from research and literature on the development of children with and without disabilities. A child’s needs and a family’s priorities guide the selection of both specific goals and the learning contexts most conducive to developing a child’s abilities.

• An educational approach should be individualized to match a child’s current developmental level and profile of learning strengths and weaknesses. Due to the developmental foundation of the SCERTS Model, individualized goals and learning differences are naturally addressed and incorporated in efforts to support a child’s development.

• An educational approach should demonstrate a logical consistency between its long-term goals and teaching strategies to achieve those goals. The continuum of goals in social communication and emotional regulation in the SCERTS Model follows a logical sequence guided by developmental research.

• An educational approach should be derived from a range of sources. In the SCERTS Model, it is recognized that there are many sources of information that may contribute to and guide the development of a program for a child, including theory, clinical and educational data, knowledge of recommended practices, social values, and empirical data.

• An educational approach should develop and apply meaningful measures of progress and outcome. We have argued previously that educational research on children with ASD has been negligent in documenting a range of meaningful outcome measures. For example, one must question the meaningfulness of often-used short-term measures of progress.

Ultimately, enhancing communication and social-emotional abilities for children with ASD entails not only increasing specific skills but also increasing many of the dynamic aspects of social communication, social relationships, and emotional regulation that are targeted as high priorities in the SCERTS Model.