Jacob is 4 years old and was diagnosed with autism in 2010. We live in Sydney and also have Ryder 2 and Willow 1 year old.

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability with difficulties in social interaction, impaired communication, restricted and repetitive interests and behaviours and sensory sensitivities. Jacob had no functional speech at 3, played alone pushing trains back and forth, had no interest in other children or his environment, often screaming if his routine was disrupted.

After the limited Federal Funding is exhausted Jacob was deemed inelligible for any NSW Government services and rejected from Government fundedABI programs, twice. Apparently we should be grateful. But where does that leave our son, our family? We refuse to become victims of a system and lose our son, we decide to explore options but need the help of a community to make a difference... to get him back. We will. It's working.

In July 2011 he commenced intensive behavioural early intervention, ABA, which is providing exciting results. Quality research shows that this approach has positive effects on the behaviour of children with autism. In fact, ABA is generally acknowledged as the most effective approach in working with children with autism. Jacob is now catching up rapidly with his language, plays appropriately with various toys, is now best friends with his brother, adores his sister and attends local pre-school. Jacob has about 20 hours a week of this therapy with the goal of mainstream schooling in 2013.

We do all the organising, recruiting and any necessary training of team members, therapy preparation, analysis and provide all the necessary resources whilst being trained therapists aswell as parents. The program is being managed by Momentum Learning Services. The program costs over $30,000 per year.

In November 2011 we held a Trivia Night Fundraiser to raise awareness and funds to continue intensive home-based ABA and experienced generosity I was not prepared for. Absolutely overwhelmed by the support and kindness offered not only by friends and family but complete strangers, who were touched by our story and the amount of hope offered by this program.

It has now been 6 months since we introduced the ABA Program and the change in Jacob is significant. Not only to us as parents but everyone that knows Jacob is commenting on his language, communication, conversation, calmness, interests, intelligence and humour!

Jacob's communication has completely exploded, almost that ABA had to teach him concepts and skills and now he can talk about those things, and use them in everyday conversations. Prior to ABA he just didn't have the words and his behaviour in 1 word: intense. He needed the structure and the intensity of the one-on-one style to be able to learn, since he was previosuly unable to learn naturally through his environment. This 100% comes back to the committment and love shown by his angels, his therapists Joanne and Megan, who have been with us from the very beginning and have seen it all, and still come back! I still remember one of the first opportunites of generalising ABA Jacob showed me. Jacob has always loved feathers and one day he was stroking it across his eyelid and said to me, "Mummy, this feather is soft". It has been life changing to now have conversations with my son, instead of just his repetitive, unique behaviours.

We are continuing the program throughout 2012 and have enrolled Jacob in the local mainstream school for 2013. It is unlikely he will qualify for or even need any support or teacher's aide. We are finally excited about his and our future as a family and beyond.

 

MARCH 2012 UPDATE: we saw the multi-assessment team for a 1 year follow up and the results are amazing. Everyone who has supported us, it is thanks to you too, all part of his therapy team. 
 
Jacob has gone from 'no functional speech with severe behavioural and compliance issues' (at 3yo) to a delightful, compliant, chatty, smart little 4yo boy, whose autism is extremely subtle, an above average and will thrive at a mainstream school in 2013!!

THANK YOU!!! Your investment has truly, truly made an outstanding difference and we are so excited for the future! You have no idea what this means to us, we never thought this was possible, we took a chance and YOU guys had our back. HOPE now has no boundaries... he may even go to university!

Email info@myjacob.org

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