Autism Spectrum Therapies

By the time the therapist gets good at this job they promote or move on and your child has to start from scratch. Unfortunately that seems to be the way aba companies go.

We have been using AST’s ABA services for over a year now, and we couldn’t be more pleased! We have had the best therapists, and more importantly our supervisor Anthony Pavlacka has been the greatest asset to our ABA services! He has been our biggest support from day one, always offering a positive side even when things get tough, helping to guide our BI’s (therapists), as well as coming up with an individualized plan that has done nothing but help my son in everyday life! My son has come a long way from where we started back in February 2014, and I credit a lot of our success to the amazing team we’ve had!
I would strongly (& have) recommended AST to anyone who is looking to receive services! They’ve been helpful from day one, and continue to impress on a daily basis!

BEWARE of their billing practices! For 3 years they never sent me a bill for my copays, then suddenly I get a bill for over $ 1,000 worth of copays! I fired them months ago, and I am still getting copay bills! I haven’t been with this company for awhile now and I am STILL getting bills!!! They also over over charged my insurance company a few times, and when the insurance company made them pay the money back, they tried to charge me the difference!!!
I think this is a decent company if you have the «typical» Autistic child. If your child has any severe behaviors (biting, kicking, spitting) this is NOT the company for you. Their main therapy technique is to ignore the behavior. This may work in a sterile environment, but when your child has siblings or goes to school, you can’t expect the behavior to be ignored. They don’t have any other techniques to fall back on if ignoring the behavior doesn’t work. I also don’t think their therapists are really trained in «actively ignoring» a behavior. One of their therapists locked my child in her room for a whole 2 hours session because she was having a meltdown. The whole 2 hours she played on her iPhone.
Another issue I have with the company is that they do not do car ride therapy. My child has violent tantrums in the car, and we really needed help in this situation. They said it was unethical for them to do therapy during a car ride.
Turn over in this company is also very high! In one month we had 3 different therapists quit on us. It seemed like we were going through the «getting to know you» phase for months. When our last therapist gave her 2 weeks notice, I wasn’t informed by the company that she was quitting or that they had a replacement until her last session. I had even contacted our supervisor via text, email and voicemail that I wanted to know if they had a new therapist ready to pick up our case. It wasn’t until I told them that I was going to start interviewing other companies that they started returning my phone calls.
If you want a company who cares about the caliber of their employees that they hire, this is not the company for you. Most of the therapists we had were straight out of school. Not a single one had any real life experience having children of their own, and most were under 25 years old.
We were with this company for 4 years. In the beginning they were great, but over the last 2 years the quality of the treatment and therapists has declined quickly. I am really glad I changed companies.

My 12 y.o. Is on the spectrum and has ADHD. We came to AST because he was having a very difficult time adjusting to middle school. Since starting services, we have seen a palpable improvement. My son’s school sent me a print out in graph form of his points for the year. It was amazing to have visual confirmation of what we knew to be true; the therapy is helping! My son is less argumentative and more helpful and organized. Every request is no longer followed by a fight! And my son has his first crush on his service provider! He actually looks forward to the days that she comes. His therapist is awesome and has been in frequent communication with my son’s teachers so that we are implementing the same techniques at home and at school. I cannot say enough about what this company has done for my son and family!

My experience with AST services has been great. The therapists have been great and the staff has been professional. I always get a quick response when I contact them. I feel very supported by this company. I feel every effort has been made to provide top quality therapists. Kristen, Scott and Arye are the best! I am very glad to have ABA services thru AST.
I have to edit this as we’ve worked with a few others from this company recently, Marciella and Bri, again I’m so impressed with them. AST has continued to provide amazing services.

Terrible company to choose for Autism services for older children. Management and directors of San Diego branch are neglectful, and unresponsive. They employee many therapists that should have no business working with children. They have not only failed my child with therapy services after a long time wonderful therapist unexpectedly was given a promotion, they also have charged me for services never rendered, and «accidentally» sent clients to collections. From the billing dept to the director you will never get problems resolved. They have also been unresponsive in my request to view my child’s data and reports. I made a decision to give my services to another company for my older child due to the fact they said they had no one to service him and things were not going well in my home with the current girl they had placed, from grabbing my child to nasty comments she made, nothing was ever done to rectify the issues. Supervisor even kept sending her time sheet with the therapists for me to sign, yet was unresponsive to my requests to view data and reports. Look elsewhere, in hindsight the only reason we stayed for a few yrs was because we had an amazing therapist who did his job as well as the job of the Supervisor and we never had issues. It wasn’t until he left, the cracks began to show.