Building the private practice workforce in the Northern Territory: Barriers and facilitators for implementation of the allied health assistant role.

Objective: To identify barriers and facilitators contributing to the successful implementation of the allied health assistant role in private disability practice to better meet population needs.

Design: A qualitative case study.

Setting: This study was completed with staff working in private disability practices in a regional context in the Northern Territory.

Aided Enhanced milieu teaching to develop symbolic and social communication skills in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Children who lack functional spoken language are candidates for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Aided AAC and naturalistic interventions offer the potential to extend the communication functions demonstrated by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who are nonspeaking. Related intervention research, however, has been limited, in that interventions have generally targeted a limited range of communication functions taught in highly structured, decontextualized environments.

A systematic review of research into aided AAC to increase social-communication functions in children with autism spectrum disorder.

Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) interventions have been shown to be effective in supporting children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to communicate, particularly to request preferred items and activities. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the effectiveness of AAC interventions in supporting children to produce a broader range of communicative functions and determine the extent to which these interventions have been evaluated beyond immediate effectiveness to address maintenance, generalization, and social validity. A systematic search and application of inclusion criteria yielded 30 interventions that focused on communication functions beyond object requests.