On November 14, Stacie Bancroft, PhD, BCBA-D, LABA shared NECC’s exemplary work with children with autism at the 4th Brazil-USA Autism Conference. Dr. Bancroft’s lecture, “A model for helping children with severe autism through education and residential treatment,” presented an overview of behavior analytic residential treatment models for severe autism. According to Dr. Bancroft, Brazil does not currently have any residential schools for children with autism but are hoping to establish some soon and were interested in learning more about how it works.
“NECC provides exemplary treatment and education for our students. However, there are countless children across the world who would benefit greatly from, but cannot directly access, our services,” shared Dr. Bancroft. “It is part of NECC’s mission to help all children with autism access quality educators and programs. One way we can do that is sharing how we help our students and their families.”
The Brazil-USA Autism Conference, which is usually held in Recife, PE, Brazil, was held virtually this year due to the pandemic. The conference is organized by the Association of Families for the Well Being and Treatment of People of Autism (AFETO), an organization founded by a group of parents of children with autism. In their quest for knowledge, AFETO started bringing professionals to the region to learn about best practices in autism treatment. Over the years, AFETO (an NGO) started providing ABA day services to children and teenagers with autism.
Dr. Bancroft is a Program Director at The New England Center for Children and has worked with children with autism and their families for over 20 years. She is an adjunct faculty member in the master’s and doctoral programs in behavior analysis at Western New England University and is President of the state professional association for behavior analysts, BABAT (Massachusetts Professionals in Behavior Analysis. Her research has been published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavioral Interventions, and Behavior Analysis in Practice.