Autism-World

As a long time private clinical behavioral specialist and consultant, I went to Michael Febrizio’s website to take a look and found, among other things, the following statement:

“Payment of the intake fee (of $500) and Michael meeting with you do not guarantee that your child will be accepted as a client of Fabrizio/Moors Consulting.”

Michael also makes it clear that he will not generate any kind of report on this intake and, again, on this webpage states that:

“Michael will not write a report based on the intake meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to evaluate whether or not the needs of your child match well with the strengths of Fabrizio/Moors Consulting’s staff members and to determine whether your goals as your child’s parent are a good match with the way in which Fabrizio/Moors Consulting delivers services.”

So, who might want to offer Michael $500 so he can stop by to decide whether he and his staff have the ’strengths’ and service model needed to work with you and your child? While such a decision is certainly reasonable on the surface, it should also be identified up front and before fees are charged. I, and many of my peers, also consider support for and involvement with the family as an integral component of intervention.

As one who has been in this field for nearly 25 years and worked in multiple states to include at a doctoral level for a number of years now, I would have to wonder. When I intiate fees with a family, I have also already agreed upon and initiated a definitive service with specific products to include written reports and recommendations.

There is a large number of people out there billing themselves as autism ‘experts’ based all too often on being able to work within a fairly narrow clinical/therapeutic model rather than one responsive to and developed for the individual child and family. This is akin to a ‘one trick pony’ approach! (Anybody remember the Paul Simon song?) While I have no knowledge of Michael’s specific background or service and he may be able to serve selected clients very well, I also would have more than a few very specific questions.

And fluency based training for autism is an instructional model which has been around for a few years now.

By Dr Lou

Technorati : autism

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Parent Resources.