School Consultation Program
Dana Zavatkay, Ph.D., BCBA-D, NCSP
Program Manager, School Consultation program
About Us
The Marcus Autism Center School Consultation program provides consultation, direct assistance and training for school systems to better serve children with behavior disorders, especially those diagnosed with autism and related disorders. School consultants provide a variety of behavioral analysis services within the school setting aimed at both increasing students’ appropriate skills and decreasing problem behaviors.
These services include consultation services, direct assessments, treatments for problem behaviors and other educational needs. The school consultants also provide training to school staff members about many educational and behavioral topics. This training will increase the capacity of the school staff to improve services for children with disabilities.
Consultation Services
Consultation services are not directly provided to a student, but these services are provided to teachers and other school staff to help guide their classroom services. Consultation includes:
- Monitoring students’ progress and the staff’s procedural integrity when implementing behavioral procedures with the student.
- Assisting school staff in recording and interpreting data for educational and behavioral programming.
- Assisting school staff or administrators with individualized.
- education plan (IEP) preparation and attending IEP meetings.
By consulting with school officials, our staff helps teachers and administrators design intervention strategies for students that take each school’s resources into account, developing case-specific solutions to complex problems that can be further applied to other students.
Direct Services
These services are provided in school systems with a consultant directly working with the student. These services involve behavioral and academic assessment techniques, treatment analyses and the implementation of academic and behavioral interventions.
Direct services include:
- Behavioral or academic assessment techniques (e.g., interviews, observation, functional behavior assessments, assessment of basic language and learning skills (ABLLS), curriculum-based assessment)
- Implementation of either academic or behavioral interventions, such as applied behavior analysis (ABA) teaching methods, toilet training and social-skills groups
- Data collection for assessment or intervention evaluation
- Hands-on training of individual school staff members
By working with school professionals, our staff can tailor intervention strategies to meet a child’s needs, a teacher’s resources and a family’s goals by offering training that teachers, administrators and parents feel confident implementing.
Training Services
Training topics vary depending on the specific needs. Training typically centers on the following topics, but can include implementation instructions for a variety of behavioral and educational topics either for individuals or for all children.
- Differential diagnoses of autism and related disorders
- Working with children with autism and related disorders
- ABA and verbal behavior teaching methods
- Use and administration of the ABLLS
- Behavioral management, behavioral assessment and behavioral intervention
- Classroom setup for effective behavioral management and increased academic engagement
- Positive behavioral supports
These training services are useful for children with autism and related disorders, but they also can be broadly applied to more effectively manage the behavioral or developmental issues among other students.
Referral
Contact Dana Zavatkay, Ph.D., BCBA-D, NCSP at 404-785-9446 for more information about the School Consultation program.