1. Regional Coordination for Successful
Autism Trainings for Principals,
General Education teachers and
Special Education staff.
2014 Every Child Counts Symposium
Monterey
ACSA

2. Presenters:
• Elizabeth Leandres Vaughn; Senior Program
Specialist, LACOE and Southwest SELPA.
• Bob Farran, SELPA Director, Southwest SELPA
(retired); DirectEd Specialized Services, Inc.

3. Purpose of today's presentation:
• To discuss a local approach to providing
trainings on Autism Spectrum Disorders in
response to State Initiatives.
• To discuss how this local approach serves as a
model for other initiatives.
• To provide samples and training materials on
ASD as part of our dissemination process.
• To define the Los Angeles County Autism
Spectrum Alliance (LACASA).

4. What led up to LACASA?
• California’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Autism
• State Superintendent’s Advisory Committee
on Autism Spectrum Disorders
• Department of Developmental Disabilities
ongoing study of the effectiveness of specific
approaches.
• Significant increase in the number of children
diagnosed with ASD.

5. Local Responses to the ASD Crisis
• Significant litigation across the state.
• Perception that outside agencies often had
better information and knowledge than public
school staff.
• Diagnostic Centers overwhelmed with the
need for additional trainings.
• Little coordination of effort and specific
groups not part of the training plans i.e.
general education teachers, administrators

6. Existing groups that shared this need
for additional trainings.
• Southern California Diagnostic Center
• Regional Coordinating Council• Regional 11 (left over from the RCC days but
still meeting monthly to coordinate trainings
through-out the LA county region).
• Greater Los Angeles Area SELPAs-GLAAS:
Monthly meeting of the 17 SELPA directors in
Los Angeles County to discuss issues and
jointly plan.

7. Goals of LACASA
• To be an interagency collaborations of the
local stake holders: School, SELPAs, Dx
Center, parents, Regional Centers, UCEDD.
• To develop training materials for selected
populations that would be provided to all
participating SELPAs to be disseminated to
districts and staff.
• To provide face to face trainings as a model
and to assure that materials were effective.

8. Who are the members?
• Diagnostic Center trainers
• Board Certified Behavior
Analysts employed by districts/SELPAs.
• Parents leaders
• Westside Regional Center ASD staff.
• USC University Center on Excellence in
Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD)
• Key SELPA directors/ program specialists
• Alternative Dispute Resolution mediator

9. Structure of LACASA
• Seen as a sub-committee of the Regional
Coordinating Council and GLAAS (SELPA
directors group) with a report from LACASA
given at each of these monthly meetings.
• Each SELPA asked to “sign-off” on
participation.
• Close coordination with Diagnostic Center
with meetings typically held at their location.

10. Coordination with other initiatives
overtime
• National Professional Development Center on
Autism Spectrum Disorders
– Key demonstration sites in Southwest SELPA and
East San Gabriel Valley SELPA.
• National Standards Project publication.
• Project Optimal, a local online training
initiative from the Southwest SELPA.

11. Training plans
• Provide regional trainings in the county to
“best the materials” and then disseminate the
PowerPoint's and materials to SELPAS.
• State with special education teachers in a
week long intensive training.
• Move to Administrators and then to general
education teachers, two underserviced groups
in terms of training priorities.

12. Implementation of Training Initiatives:
• Five Day Special Education Teacher
Training
• Administrators’ Training
• General Education Teacher Training

13. Five Day Teacher Training
• Disability Awareness
• Introduction to Evidence Based Strategies
– Applied Behavior Analysis
– Visual Supports
– Discrete Trial/Pivotal Response Training
• IEP/Compliance

14. What do the trainings cover?
• Samples of each session will be shown to the
group during the sessions. The presenters will
provide how to access specific copies of these
trainings at the session.
• Special thanks to the various presenters for
loaning their presentations.

15. Logistics
• 7 sessions offered across 3 years (2-3
sessions/year)
• Varied regional locations utilized
– Los Angeles
– Downey
– San Fernando Valley
• Attended by members of 16 SELPAs, Regional
Centers, Los Angeles County Office of
Education, and Parents.

16. Administrators’ Training
• Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorder
– Review of trends in special education
• Tools for working collaboratively with Staff
and Families
– Perspective taking (Yarn Activity)
– Defining and understanding roles in the IEP
process

17. Logistics
• 4-6 half day trainings yearly (across 3 years)
• Varied regionalized locations included
– Pomona
– Santa Clarita
– Los Angeles
• Average of 18 districts represented per day
(across am/pm sessions).

18. Changes in the Landscape
• National Professional Development Project
– Research published on Evidence Based intervention
– California Autism Professional Training And
Information Network (CAPTAIN)
• Financial Climate
– Fiscal impact of training on Districts
– Timing and availability of trainings
– Need for internalized capacity building

19. General Education Teacher Training
• Targets General Educators who teach students
with Autism for a portion or all of their day.
• Featured topics:
– What is Autism?
– Behavior Strategies for the general education
Classroom
– Regional Center
– Parent Panel
– Visual strategies/Supports
– Accommodations and Modifications

20. Logistics
• 70-100 participants per session
• Range of 15-23 districts represented per
session (including private schools, county
office of education, and Charter schools)
• Consistently high attendance and feedbackaddresses a training need not being directly
targeted in other training initiatives.

23. Next Steps…
• Continued support for General Education
Teachers
• Partnerships with LEA’s to build capacity
– Trainer of trainer models
– Use of technology to disseminate information
– Ongoing review of data, adjustments to current
trainings, and development of new trainings to
support efforts of other state agencies and
intiatives

24. Using this approach as a model for
other initiatives
• Collaborative models across regions improve
access to trainings and lower costs for al involved.
• Model could be used for Mental Health
initiatives; Common Core trainings or other large
scale topics where lots of people need various
levels of trainings.
• Local leadership is essential and Diagnostic
Center participation most helpful and
appreciated.

25. Questions and Comments
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