In a child psychiatric clinic for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) a long waiting list and outplacement difficulties were a substantial problem in the past years. This problem has been tackled by going back to the main focus of our treatment, ensuring that children are able to go back home to their parents after clinical treatment.

By redefining the main goal of clinical treatment in return to the family this problem has been overcome. In the search of tools to empower child and parents we adjusted the principles of Pivotal Response Treatment to our clinical setting.

To empower child and parents in order to make a return to the family possible.

The aim was to improve the learning environment in the clinical treatment groups and at home in order to increase child initiatives.

An Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) training package was developed for the staff in order to increase learning situations in the clinic. Elements within the package are a two-day training workshop in ABA techniques, live feedback and video feedback during three months after training. For parents an ABA parent group training was developed in order to increase learning situations at home. In the training parents were introduced with ABA techniques and received video feedback. Parents participated in eight group sessions and two individual sessions.

At the time of writing this study is still in progress. At the Congress the first preliminary results will be discussed and the first conclusions will be drawn.