Autism Home Support Services, Inc Review

Really great place. The facility has a large play room with a platform swing and a slide amongst other toys. Everybody is very nice and enjoy working with kids of all ages.

Really love these people! They have made such a difference in my daughter. We tried another facility before coming here and the difference is night and day.

Mixed feelings. Some therapists were great, but also we were forced to let a few go because we found them not possessing necessary skills to work with our kid. One of the ladies told us that she secured the job with this company because she was not able to find any other option. Beware that decent therapists tend to leave this company. Another trend we noticed, is that pretty much all of the therapists pursue their educational goals to become BCBAs rather than continue to working with children. Some programs offered were not tailored to the specific situations we needed to be addressed but rather focusing on something that had little or no benefit at the moment. Parents should follow closely what is being offered in terms of the goals and ways to achieve such goals. Be prepared that therapists sometimes "become ill" right before the holidays. Other than that, everything else is petty typical or standard. We were pretty selective and people that work with our kid are decent, caring and professional, however, all described above did happen as well.

I can't even begin to tell you how great my son's therapists have been. He has made so much progress in the past 6 months since we started. I will forever be grateful for finding autism home support!

Nothing short of the most stellar roller coaster ride! We had an amazing BCBA bar non THE VERY BEST OF THE BEST! I can t say enough about my team and this amazing organization. 2 kids 1 recovering and another just a few short months way. My advice is PUT THE WORK IN! If you don t like what you hear try to open yourself to it. Changing you starts your path to being the very best parent advocate for your child. It gives the child a much better success rate. Hey Even I follow the program mindfulness. The ACT/AIM program is amazing for anyone! Also my children are extremely high functioning. My son phased out in 1 year. My daughter will be alittle over two years. My daughter had a more severe dx however their strong language and reading skills are far above their peers. I m gonna miss my team .

A. Amburgey
Belvidere IL

We are so grateful to AHSS for everything they have done for us they have changed our life s, my son started therapy with his team 9 months ago, when they meet him he had a year of EI but was completely non verbal, he couldn t follow directions with very little eye contact. Since then he has grown tremendously, he greets everyone when they come over, he talks non stop in full sentences, follows directions. he is so much happier and much more present. They truly care about the progress my son makes and making sure we have all the tools to support his therapy and progress. Thank you so much!

We have been working with AHSS for four months now. Our son is 3 years old and is thriving under the care and support of his AHSS team. The progress he has made since we started ABA is phenomenal. This week he started using "I want" statements. I know that, without their help, we would still be living with a child who didn't speak or interact with us at all.
ABA is not a quick or inexpensive fix but - for us, who are willing to sacrifice whatever necessary to help our child - it has been life changing.

Without question, my son has developed more independent skills and continues to learn coping skills to be the best he can be in many developmental areas due to the therapists hard work at this amazing company

Coming into Autism Home Support Services, our family was looking for a service that could proactively help our highly-functioning child with autism with both academic and life skills to further reinforce the skills that were already being taught at school. Initially, it seemed as if this therapy would not only meet, but exceed all our expectations. Our first meeting with the directors of the service was met with a full-fledged formal interview and grand goals for the future, along with promises to come to them no matter the problem, leading us to be immensely impressed from the get-go. However, throughout the course of 11 months we continued the service, we saw minimal improvement (if any) which can be attributed to the following reasons:

The primary problems we faced with the service all came from the same source - a headstrong BCBA who was unwilling to listen to her clients. Once we started the therapy, we felt that the service was progressing at a much slower pace than we had expected, and took this up with the BCBA at the next monthly meeting. She promised to take this into account and told us she had altered the program accordingly for the next month. However, as time went on, it seemed as if not much had changed, and we brought up this issue again at the next meeting. From that point on, that issue must have been brought up at every monthly meeting since, yet the BCBA always claimed that the data showed that our child was not ready to move on because she hadn t met a certain benchmark e.g. she hadn t answered the particular question correctly 80% of the time and, therefore, hadn t mastered the skill and could not move onto a more advanced one. The problem with this logic is that because of how many times the same questions had been posed to her, my child had grown tired of answering the same questions day after day, and therefore even if she knew them, she would not answer only out of disinterest, not because she did not know the answer. Nevertheless, this would be taken as her not having mastered the skill, and she was yet again stuck in the same curriculum for weeks.

The therapists of this service also did not prove themselves to be competent, always having to be told what to do instead of taking it upon themselves to bring creativity to their jobs. In the first couple of months, all the therapists would do for 90% of the time is take data on our child as if she was a lab rat. Only after months of bringing up this issue at monthly meetings did the constant data-collecting finally abate. It is understandable that ABA therapy itself operates on data collection, and by no means is our family opposing that. However, it was the extent to which this data collection was taking up valuable time that made it a critical issue; the therapists were acting as if their primary objective was data collection rather than helping the child.

Our family is with a new ABA company now, and doing much better than we ever could have by staying at Autism Home Support Services.

In summary, if your child is severely affected by autism and needs a therapeutic service that goes at a slower pace, then you may consider this service, but if your child is highly-functioning, then THIS SERVICE IS NOT FOR YOU.

This company may be good for children with moderate or severe autism. It was not good for my son who is very high functioning. When they finally got people to work with my son after months of waiting they were both new and did not really know the proper procedures. They were great with him but didn't seem confident on what they were suppose to be doing. This company is very much about money we were told our insurance covered their services except our out of pocket and they said they would split that for the whole year. We didn't think the 1500 for a year was too bad. Well they said my son graduated after only 2 months?? We now have a $2500 bill and our son is no better then when he started and only worked with them for 2 months. They told us he needed a tutor and not their services. We are now realizing we could have gotten 2 years worth of tutoring for what we spent with them and got nowhere. Reminder the 2500 was our portion, our insurance paid close to 7500. We like the supervisors they knew what they were doing but for this kind of money we should have had them with our son and for an entire year. We are now back to the drawing board with what services to get him and now in debt.

We were with AHS for almost 2 years because we were told over and over that behavioral therapy is then only researched based program paid for my insurance. At the end of our time we were given a huge bill ($30,000) that had built up. Not once were we given communication that our insurance had stopped paying. Then, they kept calling wanting full payment. We set up a payment plan. However, in the middle of the plan, they turned our account over to a credit collection company. I feel we were scammed. I had asked for pricing for each visit or service and was told that there were so many codes depending upon what they were doing with my son that they could t possibly provide me with them all. I feel used. Shame on them for taking advantage of families trying to help their autistic children.

I cannot give them a good rating because of their billing and practices. Their billing person, Stacy, decided (without asking me first), to cancel a payment of $1,562. That upset me because I never approved the cancellation. I was actually going to lump it together with other debt to pay off over 12 months with my credit card company. When I tried to explain this to her she thought I was asking them to give me 12 months to pay it off. How did she NOT hear what I just said? Also, my boy needs help with communication. Our coordinator is not focusing on that but on too many other things just to extend keeping us with them. I can potty train my boy and help him learn to brush his teeth and eat with a fork. I don't need Autism Home Health Support to waste time doing this! They need to learn to 'focus on the need of the child'! Finally, depending on your insurance, you may be on the hook for a minium of $5,000/year.

BCBA and team members are very knowledgeable and show great empathy for children and young adults on the spectrum.

This may be the worst and most unethical ABA provider I have ever heard of and personally encountered. They recommended and required services my child does not need and tried to bully me into taking these unneeded services or they would not provide any services. They refused to let my son attend an autism camp over the summer or they again threatened to not provide any services. They spent three months making me jump through hoops to get my child a new ABA provider and then told me they would provide no services if I didn t meet their demands. I would say everyone should beware and I would not recommend services here to anyone with an autistic child.