France is 40 years behind the autism management. It is in the face of this distressing observation that the association Autisme Espoir Vers l’Ecole (AEVE) addresses this April 21, 2016 an open letter to the Minister of Social Affairs and Health Marisol Touraine. AEVE has been advocating for 10 years the 3i method (for intensive, individual and interactive), a developmental and educational technique. This is based on non-directive play and a fun exchange between the child and volunteers, one-to-one. This interaction allows the child suffering from autism spectrum disorders (TSA) to reconstruct each of the developmental stages that it has overshadowed. Thus, for 10 years, AEVE has followed 449 autistic children, of which 51% have returned to a traditional school course after three years of the 3i method.
“Objective situations of child abuse”
However, this method is not sufficiently taken into account in hospital-university research programs, despite the recommendation of the High Authority for Health (HAS) to “carry out clinical research on emerging methods“, like the 3i method, AEVE warns. Parents who choose these developmental therapies for their child do not therefore benefit from financial allowances. In addition, AEVE denounces the government’s choice to place all children with ASD in collective structure “which leads to objective situations of child abuse“. The association explains in fact that”the developmental or sensory peculiarities of these children are not taken into account, although it is demonstrated […] that they are subject to a unbearable sensory overload in any collective place, whether it is the classroom or the playground“.
Reimburse expenses related to the 3i method
The open letter from the AEVE association therefore asks the Minister of Health to offer families greater freedom of choice, according to their needs and desires.
Concretely, the 3i method presents a very good cost / efficiency ratio, since it is “10 times less expensive than cognitive-behavioral methods [comme la méthode ABA], and further avoids institutionalization in adulthood“, underlines AEVE. An argument which supports the request of the association to attribute a reimbursable character to the expenses related to the method of 3i (arrangement of a playroom for the child, training of the parents and follow-up by a psychologist ).
AEVE does not wish to impose the 3i method here, but to include it in a wide range of choices for parents of autistic children, often destitute and poorly informed. And allow hundreds of autistic children to find, step by step, the way to school and the joy of living.
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