She's been in the job for less than a month, but already Donna Kuzlowski has significantly improved family life for a handful of families dealing with autism.

Mrs. Kuzlowski was an early childhood school teacher who was inspired when she saw the impact a behavioural psychologist made in a classroom she was working in.

She decided to specialise herself and today is a Board Certified behavioural analyst educator. As such she is trained to help special needs children, including those with cognitive disabilities and conditions like autism, function and integrate in society as best as possible.

Now she is working for Bermuda Autism Support and Education (BASE) which hired Mrs Kuzlowski to provide support for families dealing with the condition. The services are free to the public.

"A behavioural analyst goes in and looks at what behaviours the child needs to succeed," said Mrs. Kuzlowski. "We look at what is interfering with learning, so it really doesn't matter if a child has disabilities or not, this work is not specific to autism. I use these principles to help everyone," she said.

BASE has partnered with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health in programmes that see Mrs Kuzlowski offering support, suggestions and training to teachers, school administrators, parents and children everyone involved in the learning process for each of her child clients.

When Body & Soul spoke with her, she was working with three pre-schoolers, seeing each separately for two hours a day, five days a week.

"I see two of the children in their homes and I have a three-year-old who doesn't have the skills to be able to get into preschool yet," she said. "He needs to be able to sit in a chair before anyone will take him and he's not quite there yet, but he will be."

And when she feels he's ready, she will take an active part in finding a nursery for him.

"I will start knocking on doors. I'll need to find a preschool that will take him and I will sit with him for an hour or two, whatever is needed. That's what I'm here for," she added.

The parents of a four-year-old boy, who asked not to be named, said there has been significant and noticeable improvement in his general behaviour and his ability to communicate since his sessions with Mrs Kuzlowski.

"The very first day she came, she played a game with him and got him to ask her to play it," said the mother. "I was shocked and I was so happy of course, because he had never ever made a request. He knows words but he would not use them to get anything."

"If he is thirsty and wants water he will just get it himself. If he wants juice he will get the chair and climb up and get it. He knows the word but he does not say it," she added.

"What is challenging and frustrating is when he wants something and he doesn't know where it's kept. He may start screaming when you can't figure it out and he won't stop."

According to Mrs. Kuzlowski, the problem is likely that her four-year-old client doesn't realise that naming what he wants will result in his getting it. That word association connection in the brain has not been made. And she said this inability to communicate was a common feature of autism.

"This inability to make themselves understood means that that they often cannot get their needs met," she said. "Sometimes they cannot even point to what they need. The first thing I want to do is find a way for them to communicate, then I can change their behaviours.

She said it was typical for them to scream if they were not getting what they needed, but that the difficulty for parents and teachers and anyone having to interact with the child was knowing what that need was.

"They may be hungry, they may need their diaper changed or that could mean that the work they have to do, is too hard," said Mrs Kuzlowski.

In one technique to overcome this problem, Ms Kuzlowski makes word associations clear to the child.

She said she played a game of ring-around-the-rosy with the four-year-old. They were holding hands looking at each other and skipping in the way of the game.

He enjoyed this, and then suddenly she stopped, looked at him said 'rosy' then started again. She said she did this a few times and when she stopped and did not say anything, he looked at her and said 'rosy?' and they would start to play again.

She said that by repeating this behaviour the child's brain makes the connection between the word and the desired action, activity or outcome better.

"When Donna is working with him, we are watching also, "said the four-year-old's father. "We want to learn how to communicate with him. We see him make requests with Donna, but he still has not ever done this with us. He has never made a request from us."

An otherwise happy and healthy four-year-old, he attends preschool with a para-professional that sits with him all day.

"Everyone is very caring at the school and some of the teachers have been trained in how to communicate with autistic children," said the father.

"We have regular meetings with everyone involved in his care, the school administrator, his para, his teacher and Donna. Everyone is working together in this," he added.

And it's this great spirit of cooperation that Mrs. Kuzlowski finds hope in. "I love giving this tool to teachers," she said. "Many teachers have trained in different techniques and find it challenging when nothing works. They know what they are doing but it doesn't work with these kids."

She said she makes teachers aware of how to use the child's strengths to communicate with them.

Most autistic children better understand visual directions. Schedules that have pictures for various activities are often a good way to 'talk' with these children.

By holding up a picture of a lunch bench, the child will know to join everyone for lunch and will go to the lunch benches, she said.

"You want to find the most motivating thing in the world to this child to get them look at you," she added.

"Give it to them as much as possible to get them to do the desired behaviour, but eventually you want them to do it alone. To do this I reinforce the behaviour continually then I decrease the schedule to maybe every other response that they give to me and I keep decreasing the schedule."

This might be achieved by a clap and distinct tone and praise every time they do the desired behaviour.

Mrs. Kuzlowski said pairing the voice with the clap was important because often autistic children did not detect any meaning in voice tone. So if you say 'great job!" to an autistic child, they don't recognise that as positive, but if you give them a clap, they do.

Mrs. Kuzlowski said she feels her purpose is to educate the community on how to communicate with special needs children. She is available free of charge for one-on-one work with autistic children, their families and school teachers.

"I go into preschools finding out what they need. I work with the child aiming for them to be more and more independent," she said.

"It's really important for children to be given the skills they need so that they are able to work in the classroom setting with their peers," she said. "All research shows that they progress much better with their peer set so it's important to give teachers the strategies that will work."

For more information on the work of BASE visit www.bermudaautism.org. To arrange an appointment email basebda@yahoo.com.