Integration

Following treatment at the Mifne Center, once the child has acquired the ability to start communicating, he is integrated in a peer group with regular children in order to provide normative modeling of social behaviors in a mainstream nursery school. Integration is a gradual process supervised by Mifne.

The Mifne concept of integration for a child with cognitive potential, even if the child has been diagnosed on the Autism Spectrum, advocates that the child has the right to be in the company of ordinary children, so that he can learn social behavior that he will gradually adopt as his development proceeds.

To take advantage of this opportunity, the child should be regularly exposed to a group of peers so that he can adjust to the group and gain self-confidence, not only during prearranged times.

Integration is appropriate in cases where support work is carried out at home, as the home-based treatment using RPT continues for several hours during the day along with the morning hours spent in nursery school.

The child’s progress at this stage can be assessed according to the following parameters:

• Shows an interest in his social environment
• Can distinguish between different people
• Starts to use his intellectual skills
• Begins to develop language
• Able to imitate a model of behavior

Analyzing data of children treated at Mifne Center, shows that 74.8% of them integrated into mainstream nurseries and schools.

The Mifne Center explored in detail the process of full integration and published a booklet that describes each stage in the process. This booklet can be purchased at the Center. (Click to request.)

.

Autism & Infants at Risk: Early Detection & Early Intervention