To truly empower individuals on the autism spectrum and all People of Determination and their families, defining the path to progress is key, starting with an assessment. We understand parents want the best for their children, so we ensure our Intake Assessment is carried out with the outmost care and clinical standards. For the assessment, we schedule a meeting with the parents and our Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) to gather background information about the individual with autism and our Registered Behavior Therapist will observe the child. The BCBA will write a report – based on the interview with the parents and observation of the child – outlining service recommendations and number of hours needed per week; the report will then be shared with the parents/ clients.

We use standardized tests to help tailor the appropriate therapy to help individuals on the autism spectrum reach their full potential. Our Behavior Assessment assesses the skill levels to provide individualized intervention plans.

Learning about the strengths and barriers that may be interfering with your child’s performance such as anxiety and hyperactivity, among others, will help you, help them. For this, Psychological Assessment is key. When there are concerns about delays in development, behavioral challenges, or learning, a comprehensive psychological evaluation provides information in relation to diagnosis and subsequent plans for treatment and intervention. Children diagnosed with ASD can benefit from psychological evaluation, providing actionable information about his or her intellectual or academic strengths and weaknesses, speech, and language skills, and/or difficulties with certain kinds of behavior and/or functions. The multidisciplinary care at The Doris Duan-Young Autism Center offers a variety of psychological assessments to identify behaviors that may interfere with a child’s performance (i.e., anxiety, hyperactivity etc) in various settings including at school. Additionally, DDY offers counselling services that focus on understanding each child’s development and how it affects their emotional and social wellbeing.

How does your child move or interact in a school and/or home environment? Through observation of functional activities in different settings, Occupational Therapy Assessment takes into account a wide range of skills and provides strategies and recommendations for interventions.

Being able to communicate helps individuals living on the autism spectrum improve their quality of life and empower their families as well. Individuals living with autism can have speech and language deficits such as minimal or no speech, or delayed onset. Speech and language can be further compounded by anxiety, inattention, and social motivation issues. Speech Language Assessment provides information on an individual’s speech and language capability to enhance communication across various settings. Using standardized tests, the assessment covers use of communicative gaze and gestures, quality of vocalizations, attention, vocabulary comprehension, and quality of play. Speech-language assessment is a multi-step process to assess, describe and interpret an individual’s communication ability.

How does your child move? Can he or she balance and coordinate well? These are just a few of the areas that physiotherapy can help your child improve muscle strength, posture, balance, reactions as well as sensory feedback, helping your child become more aware of his or her body and movements. Physiotherapy Assessment assesses overall motor functioning, identifies strengths and any difficulties children may have with their movement skills, and provides an intervention program.