Great Plains Autism Spectrum Disorders Treatment Program
Overview
The Great Plains Autism Spectrum Disorder Treatment Program provides training, research, diagnostic and treatment services to North Dakota children and youth suspected or diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).
GPAST autism services are currently being provided through community-based screening and diagnostic clinics. Throughout our funding period, we will coordinate with community professionals to provide screening and diagnostic services. GPAST team members will be either onsite or utilizing distance technologies to connect families and their child’s teachers to professionals. The community-based clinics enables parents and teachers to access services without having to travel long distances. We recognize that by virtue of testing new technologies, there will be “lessons learned”. These efforts are being made to find a suitable service delivery model that meets the needs of our state and provides a quality and worthwhile service to families. It is our hope that through this process, we can affect statewide change by making recommendations to ND policymakers on how to enhance service delivery models in ND.
For more information, please contact:
Wendy Thomas at 1-800-233-1737
Event Summaries
South Central, ND Spring 2010
Southwestern, ND Winter 2010
Northwestern, ND Winter 2009
The GPAST team carried out our first diagnostic clinic for year 2 in Northwest ND. Of six original referrals, two received assessments. Children not participating in the diagnostic clinic were eliminated due to parent decision not to participate or child illness the day of clinic. Observations and standardized screening tools were utilized during the screening and diagnostic process.
Distance technology was utilized to provide access to local team members in order to increase capacity of the local team, test the feasibility of providing professional availability through technology and maintain low numbers of people in the assessment room. Local team members were able to view the arena style assessment, test scoring reliability of the ADOS, and participate in discussion of results.
Central ND Summer 2009
Northwestern ND Spring 2009
-4 children referred for screening
-4 children received diagnostic services
- 100 children screened by area educational staff
- 28 children received further screening by GPAST
(3 elementary, 20 pre-school aged, 5 toddlers)
- 3 children received diagnostic services
(1 elementary, 1 pre-school aged, 1 toddler)
