Once we have identified your child’s profile of strengths and difficulties, we collaborate with you to identify the goals for therapy, which forms the basis of our intervention plan. During this process, we will ask you to identify the skills and/or behaviours that are the priority to work on now.   We will also ask you to look into the future of your child and to think about what skills and/or behaviours you would like to work on over the longer term.

When goal setting, it is important to decide on the program intensity that is most appropriate for your family and for your child. Program intensity refers to the frequency and duration of sessions. At TMB, we can tailor program intensity and content to suit your child’s goals. There is strong evidence that children with autism spectrum disorders may benefit from comprehensive and intensive therapy (ranging from 10 to 30 hours per week). Your treatment team can help you to decide which treatment model is right for you and your family.

Goals and program format are always shared with the professionals involved with your child.

Early Intensive Behaviour therapy sessions typically last 120-180 minutes. While this may seem long, we find that children benefit from sessions of longer duration because it enables more repetition, skills can be practiced in a variety of environments, and we can capitalize on natural opportunities for skills development, e.g. by going for a walk to the playground, have a snack or play in the garden. Sessions are packed full of fun, but we also make sure we allow your child plenty of ‘downtime’ from learning.

You and other family members are always encouraged to participate in these sessions, as this is a great opportunity for you to learn the strategies that will help your child.

Focused behaviour Intervention sessions typically last 90-120 minutes. During these sessions, we target a small number of functional goals for your child. Goals may include one or more of the following:

• Reducing behaviour of concern
• Improving transitions
• Implementing a communication system at home
• Increasing independent engagement
• Improving mealtime behaviour

The aim of these sessions is to provide you with the strategies to reduce challenging behaviour and increase functional skills. It is expected that you will practice these strategies in between sessions.

Speech Therapy Sessions typically last 45 -60 minutes and can be conducted in your home or other settings such as day care, preschool or school. These sessions are more focused specifically on the domains of speech, language, literacy and social communication. To the Moon & Back can provide assessment and therapy for a range of communication areas such as:

• Social communication and social skills
• Play skills
• Expressive and receptive language
• Language comprehension and listening skills
• Speech sounds
• Fluency
• Literacy

Supporting children in their early childhood settings provides us a valuable opportunity to increase social communication skills with their peers.   It also enables us to support the early childhood teachers in teaching your child vital school readiness skills. Goals for preschool/childcare support may include:

• Reducing behaviour of concern
• Improving transitions between activities
• Improving participation in group times (e.g. circle time).
• Sharing
• Turn taking
• Responding to play initiations from peers
• Initiating play

The transition to ‘big school’ presents new challenges for children. The school environment is often larger, noisier and more demanding.   Children are expected to engage in routines and follow instructions from teachers. The school social setting can be overwhelming for your child.

School observations help us to understand how your child is functioning in their school environment. This allows us to provide your child’s teachers with strategies to improve their ‘Learning to learn’ skills. Goals for school sessions may include:

• Reducing behaviour of concern
• Following instructions
• Sitting and listening
• Task completion
• Working in a group

We collaborate with your child’s teacher every step of the way to ensure that their goals align with the New South Wales K-10 Syllabus and with their Individual Education Plan (IEP).