This audio series reflects footage recorded from a Meet the Expert series hosted by Nai Disha Resource Centre with Dr. Padma Palwai on Autism Management Techniques. Dr. Padma Palwai is a psychiatrist based out of Hyderabad who has experience working with children diagnosed with autism and or ADHD. For more information about autism, please visit www. n-a-y-i-d-i-s-h-a.org Naidisha Resource Centre serves to provide essential information to families of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
It also provides assistance finding service providers and offer peer group support and interaction. Topic discussed in this audio clip, What is the TEACH program and how does it help? with autism management. So TEACH, we were talking about TEACH. So what is the full form of TEACH?
Treatment and Education of Autistic and Related Communication Handicapped Children, right? So it's basically less of a therapy program. It's more of a way to teach children in a structured way, right? So the history is ABA was born on the west coast of US in California, right?
started by Dr. Lovaas, right? And it's been around for a long time. And for some reason, they were able to do a lot of studies and it is well established, right? TEACH started in North Carolina, University of North Carolina.
People that know the US, it's on the East Coast. It is a very well established program as well. If you go to North Carolina in the US, all you have is TEACH programs.
Nobody talks about ABA. It's a turf issue. You can't go to North Carolina and talk about ABA, right? So it's kind of how it is, but basically it works well.
It's a good program. It has a good amount of scientific base to it. And there is always politics to this stuff. There is always politics to this stuff.
Most people think that it's not more studied because it's not better funded, not that it is an inferior program. But, you know, it has a little bit less number of studies than ABA, much less, but it's a well-established therapeutic program. So basically, you're talking about the teacher in the classroom, not the therapist when you talk about the teach program, a trained teacher.
So close working relationship between practitioners and parents and structuring the physical environment is a big part of how teach people do it. They organize the environment. For example, they will have like, you know, divisions between where you work, where you play, where you nap. There is physical boundaries. It makes it very easy for the child to adapt to the environment.
Strict routines. They follow the same routines because they believe that children on the spectrum thrive on routines. So they have a strict routine every day and they have visual cues. For example, they might have a calendar laid out for the entire day, every day. maybe even an entire month and a year.
So they structure the environment in such a way that everything is laid out. So that is the TEACH program, and it is a good, well-established program.