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TRC raises $15,000 to build autism assesment centre
TRC Group has committed to building an early assessment centre for Giant Steps School. The centre will provide the school with a more effective and efficient method of diagnosing autism in children.
For Giant Steps to effectively assess and identify children with autism the child is assessed using Giant Steps' ground breaking method. This involves several assessors observing how the child plays alone and interacts with others. The assessment currently takes several days.
For this method to be effective parents need to be separated from their child for some time. This can obviously be a challenging time for both parent and child. Early diagnosis and treatment has been shown to greatly increase the child's ability to integrate effectively into mainstream society so undergoing this assessment as early as possible is critical.
Under current arrangements, due to the lack of adequate facilities and to the time each assessment takes to conduct, Giant Steps are unable to meet the demand by parents.
The assessment centre will provide an environment specially designed to minimise the stress of the assessment, allowing parents to observe their child through a 1 way mirror and to learn about their child's behaviours first hand. The centre will reduce, by more than half, the time taken to conduct the process allowing Giant Steps to better meet demand for the service.
TRC Group has, with he help of staff, families of staff, clients and candidates, successfully raised $15,000 to build this centre and building works are now underway, 1 month ahead of schedule. The centre is now expected to be finished in January 2011.