background Long waiting lists for clinical treatment and difficulties in the outplacement of in-treatment children formed a permanent and substantial problem in our clinical setting. Many children were ‘hopping’ from clinic to clinic and thus were institutionalised for years. We wanted to change this.
Aim To empower parents in such a way that they can manage their child at home.
methods The main focus of clinical treatment has become ensuring that children are able to return to their parents  after clinical treatment. Central goal is empowering child and parents by making them more aware and  competent.
Explicit commitment is asked from parents to be prepared to collaborate on reaching this main goal. This parental commitment has become a leading inclusion criterion for clinical treatment. Leading treatment principle is working on the necessary conditions enabling the child to live at home. This requires intensive cooperation between staff and parents.
In addition to regular clinical treatment, we searched for a method to improve both this partnership
and parental and staff skills. Pivotal Response Treatment (prt) contains many elements that are congruent with these wishes. An Applied Behavior Analysis (aba) training package with prt principles was developed on behalf of both clinical staff and parents. Details of the training program are described below.
results Since the treatment focus has shifted strictly to placing children back home, the percentage  of children returning to parents has increased significantly. By adding aba we hope to
enlarge this percentage further. We expect that parents and staff will develop essential skills in
educating and guiding (their) asd children. We hope this will have a positive effect on the empowerment
of parents and children.
conclusion Strictly focusing on returning the child to his/her parents and working principally on  maximizing the conditions to achieve this, has led to an increase of children returning home. A further increase is expected with the introduction of aba.