The nationwide model of ASD screening for children (7-30 months old) and monitoring of ASD groups of risk

In the SYNAPSIS Foundation Center for Children with ASD, for over 26 years, the team of professionals has been leading diagnosis and treatment of ASD in cooperation with leading scientific centers in Poland. Over the years,... [ view full abstract ]

In the SYNAPSIS Foundation Center for Children with ASD, for over 26 years, the team of professionals has been leading diagnosis and treatment of ASD in cooperation with leading scientific centers in Poland.

Over the years, we have gradually achieved a significant reduction in the age of children seeking diagnosis in our country. In 2008- 2013 we have achieved expertise in diagnosing children from 7 to 24 months. During that years we have been monitoring development of children of the same age from the groups of highest risk of ASD and we have diagnosed 626 children.

In 2014, based on years of experience we have initiated the first a nationwide programme of screening in Poland. In cooperation with authors we developed national version of screening tools e.g. M-CHAT-R/F and SACS-R. We have obtained over 140 institutional partners for our programme. 110 nurses and psychologists have completed training in SACS-R in 2014 and they have screened over 3200 children. Since the beginning of 2015 we have also trained over 1600 specialists in using the M-CHAT-R and the follow-up procedures and they managed to screen near 9000 children. We would like to emphasize that although our screening programme is nationwide and it is conducted by a non-governmental organization, we don’t get any kind of financial support from central or local authorities.

Our poster will present the first model for the nationwide screening programme in Poland which is implemented in our country together with current data.