As parents of children with autism, we are dependent upon many experts to advise us what to do to help our children. The sheer amount of feedback from educators, therapists, specialists and well-meaning friends and family members is overwhelming, and it is easy to get lost inthe various opinions, suggestions, and frankly, the personal agendae being tossed at us every day. Some of it is pretty good stuff, and some of it is pure distraction.
Whom should we listen to? Whom should we trust? It’s not an easy question to answer, and referrals/references from local autism chapters and other parents can help, but are often insufficient to get to a short list of viable candidates.
One tool that my husband and I have found to be effective is a simple scorecard. Scorecards have been used in business for years, and can be built with sophisticated analytics, or organized around a few easy rules of common sense. We recommend the easy version! To create a basic scorecard, you simply take a set of characteristics that you think are most predictive of a good outcome — in this case, an effective advisor or caregiver. Each attribute is then graded individually, and then the individual components are tallied into a combined score. Those candidates who scored in the top half can be mined as valuable assets, and those in the lower half can be redirected to another subject –like the weather — or politely ignored.
