ABA is a radical, expensive and highly controversial tough-love treatment that is heavily criticised as “cruel”, but it’s the only evidence-based method proven to either “halt or even reverse a child’s autism”.

For the UK, ABA therapy is still treated with a level of distrust. Criticised for being “cruel” due to its intensive nature, parents who have seen the results it can achieve argue that, “Britain’s autistic children are currently receiving therapy that is 30 years out of date”.

Although rarely offered as an option by the UK government and the NHS, there have been signs that ABA can work on a state-school budget. Treetops in Grays, Essex, is the only state-funded ABA school in the UK, taking in children from the ages of 3 to 19. Recently, The Peachtree Centre opened an ABA unit that is attached to the school. Its aim is to take children aged 4-11, with the belief that intensive support through these formative years, can prepare these children to join the mainstream school at 12.

ABA is standard practise in Canada, Italy, The Netherlands, and Scandinavia. In the US, 34 states have made it so that insurance companies must cover the costs of ABA therapy. In Britain however, ABA’s use in autism is still poorly understood, with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence finding no evidence to support the method – an oddity, as ABA is possibly “the only comprehensive treatment programme with proven results, supported by research”. Bizarrely, the recommended solutions in the UK include Occupational Therapy and Speech and Language Therapy, methods that both show very little efficacy when used to treat children with autism.

Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tough-love-fkjv0pc5s5n