Baseless autism interventions are ‘dark arts’

Responding to interventions touted to benefit the treatment of autism in children, such as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, medicinal marijuana and aquatic therapy, is "defense against the dark arts," said Samuel Odom, professor at the School of Education of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the US.

“I call these the dark arts because parents want the best for their children and many of these treatments cost lots of money,” he said. “And to be pulled into a treatment that has very little evidence of efficacy, I think, is a dark thing to do.”

Prof Odom delivered a talk on evidence-based programs for students with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) at the sixth annual National Council for Special Education Research Conference held today at the Croke Park Convention Centre. The conference was opened by Minister for Education and Skills Jan O'Sullivan TD and about 300 - including teachers, parents, advocacy group representatives and academics - attended the event.

Autism, probably more than any disability, has a unique set of abilities, but the treatment has been shrouded in mystery, Prof Odom said.

The prevalence of ASD has grown from two in 10,000 when Prof Odom started working in the field, he said. Today, that rate is one in 68.

“Parents of children with special needs have argued for years that information on services and support is crucial but often difficult to find,” Ms O’Sullivan said. “I’m hopeful that this (policy) advice will assist in identifying the educational interventions, teaching practices and other support, all of which should be provided to enable children with autism to participate and contribute to our society.”

Test scores of children ‘underestimated’

“There has been a lot of investment in special educational needs, but not a whole lot is known about how these children are doing,” said Jude Cosgrove, research associate at the Educational Research Centre in Dublin.

Cosgrove was presenting the results of a study commissioned by the National Council for Special Education (NCSE) on experiences and outcomes for children with special educational needs, such as ASD, dyslexia, or speech and language difficulty.

Using data on the cohort of nine-year-old children from the 2007 Growing Up in Ireland survey, a large-scale longitudinal study, the research team compared the teachers' rating of the children's reading test scores with the children's actual scores.

“It seemed that children with special needs are being underestimated in terms of their test scores as a second measure of proficiency, and they’re being underestimated more frequently than children without special needs,” Cosgrove said. “Conversely, children without special needs are being overestimated twice as often as children with special needs.”

“It would be tempting to delve into those results at some stage and ask, ‘What’s going on there?’”

The study also found that parents’ expectations of highest level of education attained varied widely: 77.6 per cent of parents of children without special educational needs expected their children to earn undergraduate or postgraduate degrees, while only 53.4 per cent of parents of children with special educational needs expected the same. In fact, 20.8 per cent of the latter group of parents expected their children to end their education with the Leaving Certificate.

Ireland’s schools fall short

Research based on surveying 24 primary, post primary, and special schools in Ireland showed that most schools had special-needs policies, said Michael Shevlin, associate professor in the School of Education at Trinity College Dublin. But those policies were variable, with little indication of how the schools intended to move towards inclusive provision, he said.

Prof Shevlin discussed the findings of Project IRIS (Inclusive Research in Irish Schools), a study funded by the NCSE.

“There is strong recognition that schools want to make provisions for diverse learners, and not just for those with special educational needs,” he said. “However, one concern … was that many of these policies had clauses limiting access for those with complex needs.”

“We had a lot of expressions like, ‘This school welcomes everybody from our local community,’” said Richard Rose, professor of inclusive education at Northampton University, “with clauses saying, ‘Once they have an assessment and we have the appropriate resources to meet their needs provided by the NCSE.’”

“That was a very common statement we found within many policies.”