The Denver Model recognizes the interplay among cognitive, communicative, and social and emotional development. It's a developmental approach that has focuses on intensive teaching, as well as on developing the social-communicative skills that are so affected by autism.
First Developed:
This program originally opened in 1981 as the Playschool Model, which was a demonstration day treatment program.
Overall Philosophy:
This developmentally oriented instructional approach is based on the premise that play is a primary vehicle for learning social, emotional, communicative and cognitive skills during early childhood. The role of the adult and the purpose of play activities vary across learning objectives. The overarching curriculum goals are to increase cognitive levels, particularly in the area of symbolic functions; increase communication through gestures, signs, and words; and enhance social and emotional growth through interpersonal relationships with adults and peers.
Popularity:
Not determined.
Time required for treatment:
20 hours/week
Treatment cost:
Once a team is trained, the coordinator’s time averages one hour per week of professional fees, with another 15 hours per week provided by bachelor-level people being paid $10-$15 per hour. The initial costs of setting up and training a team are challenging to many families, and unfortunately not usually reimbursable by third party payers. At this point, the funding of each child’s program is individually determined.
Who directs the treatment?
Since its inception, the program has been directed by Sally J. Rogers, Ph.D., a developmental psychologist. The treatment team is responsible for an individual child’s intervention plan and implementation. The treatment team is headed by the parents and one professional from the core disciplines who becomes the coordinator of a child’s care. After the child has received an interdisciplinary assessment, the coordinator develops the child’s quarterly objectives, teaching activities, programs and data collection system. The coordinator then sets up the curricular notebook containing the aforementioned components. In addition, the coordinator works directly with the family, the child and the classroom staff to implement the objectives. They also provide whatever training is needed for home teaching assistants, in-services in community preschools and classroom assistants in the community, and monitor the child’s progress through biweekly or monthly team meetings or “clinics” with all intervention providers. The coordinator observes and fine-tunes the intervention being implemented in the three main settings, reviews data and puts new objectives in place at the “clinic” or team meetings, helps problem-solve, and insures that the intervention is proceeding appropriately and the child is progressing as rapidly as possible.
Where does the treatment take place?
At home and at school in an inclusive classroom alongside developmentally able students.
Training material needed:
No specialized materials.
How success is defined:
The Denver Model is family-based, with parents taking the lead in determining their child’s treatment objective. The model’s tenet is that because each child with autism and each family is unique, goals, interventions and approaches will be individualized to each particular child.
Biggest Success Story:
There have been at least four peer-reviewed outcome reports on the Denver Model. One evaluation of the progress of 49 children treated with this model reported better-than-predicted gains in all developmental areas assessed by the Early Intervention Developmental Profile and Preschool Profile, with the exception of self-help skills. In addition, impressive language gains were demonstrated on standardized language assessments (one of five commonly used instruments) conducted by the children’s speech and language pathologists. Another assessment of the progress of the first 31 children treated in this model revealed small but statistically significant improvements in symbolic and social and communicative play skills, as rated on an objective observational system by blind observers. Moreover, there were indications that the intervention had impacted the severity of autism, as measured in the Childhood Autism Rating Scale.
Website:
www.jfkpartners.org/
Main concern:
Less well studied than ABA; lack of controlled research makes it impossible to draw firm conclusions about the effectiveness of this program