Assessing progress during treatment for young children with autism receiving intensive behavioural interventions.

Hayward et al. (2009) tracked kids with autism for one year.

Half got clinic-based UCLA ABA for about 36 hours each week.

The other half got the same hours at home, run by parents with weekly expert checks.

The team measured IQ, language, social, motor, and daily-living skills every few months.

Both groups gained 16 IQ points on average.

Language, play, and self-care improved too.

Clinic and parent scores looked the same at every check.

Parent-managed kids kept pace with full clinic kids.

Earlier work said parents could not match clinics. Hastings et al. (2001) and Bibby et al. (2002) saw small adaptive gains and no IQ lift.

Diane’s team shows the gap closes when parents get steady expert coaching each week.

Rodgers et al. (2021) pooled 491 kids and found small-to-medium gains after two years. Diane’s one-year jump is larger, likely because her families hit the full 36 hours while many pooled studies used fewer.

McKinnon et al. (2024) later copied the model in Australia at 27 hours and still saw big gains, showing the parent-clinic match holds outside the lab.

You can offer families a real choice. If a clinic slot is full, a parent-run program with weekly BCBA supervision can still produce large IQ and adaptive gains.

Start with solid parent training, then keep the expert check-ins tight. The data say that mix equals full clinic care.