Overcoming challenges in school-based AT/AAC Implementation: A tested model for consultation

Chris Gibbons

10/1/2019 5:29 PM

First I want to shout out to Gayl Bowser for her excellent posts on capacity-building in AT service delivery. It's an absolutely critical strategy as we strive for the most supportive AT environment possible. Great job Gayl and thank you!

Following on from Gayl's topic it seems natural to introduce the AT consultative model we've developed at PROVAIL in Seattle, WA. This model is replicable, adaptable, hopefully energizing, and/or may simply get the creative juices flowing as you invent your own framework for AT consultation.

We at PROVAIL have provided formal consultative AT services to school districts for years in the greater Seattle region. It became clear early on that the dynamic nature of AT implementation, team makeup, district administration goals for service, student placement, classroom support/culture, AT knowledge, student motivations, etc. are all factors that cry out for a well-organized, deliberate, and efficient framework to guide consultation. 

Identifying areas of strength in our approach and formally staging AT consultation into discrete and manageable bits has evolved into a common sense model - which I'll introduce below and add detail in subsequent posts. 

But first I'll list just a few of the challenges we face on a regular basis that highlight the need for a formal consultative model:

• Assembling an AT team
• Cultural barriers
• Management of large caseloads
• Cost effectiveness of intervention
• Cost effectiveness of solutions
• Multiple language/AAC systems
• Goals ID'd on IEP and in treatment
• Student participation across contexts
• Best practice knowledge and implementation
• Litigious environment/compliance
• Collaboration within and across team(s)
• Implementation focus and process
• Assessment of intervention success/data keeping
• Nimble reaction to developmental changes

Of course there are many, many more that I'm sure you can add to this list. Importantly, we have found great success in addressing challenges across the board when we impose a model that leaves little room for key pieces of the process to go missing. 

One way to illustrate this is with the attached PDF "Building Blocks for Building Capacity" (yet another string connecting Gayl Bowser's earlier posts and this one). Positive change at a system level only occurs with vision, collaboration, adequate skills, incentive, resources, and a well-articulated plan. We love this table because it so clearly depicts foils to successful process when any one component is ignored.

I'll end with the five stages of our model. As suggested in future posts, the stages are at times interactive, but they are necessarily discrete in focus and order for organizational purposes. We designed and tested this model specifically to address a wide range of AT implementation challenges while simultaneously guarding against inadvertently losing any building blocks to success.

The five stages of our model include:

1. Method
2. Intake
3. Planning
4. Implementation
5. Analysis

Future posts will illustrate the scope and intent of each stage and provide examples of how they frame our consultative service while retaining some flexibility in application. To that end, we engage districts in a linear consultation process through each stage, however, there are aspects of this model that beg for circularity and repetition. But more on that later. Thanks for reading!

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Attached is the PDF "Building Blocks for Building Capacity" referenced in this post. 

Chris Gibbons - 10/14/2019