6 Reasons Why Autism Step Would Be the
Wrong Step for your Child
To the unknowing parent, Autism
Step appears to be a reputable and established autism therapy
centre that looks like it could offer quality early intervention
services for their child.
After all, its website proudly
displays an award from Parent’s World on its homepage that
proclaims it to be the “best” in early intervention programmes for
children with autism.
It even has a senior consultant
from Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Dr Veerasamy Senthamil Selvan, who
vouches for it and personally endorses its clinical director Mr
Zhang Liyuan, who claims to have over 20,000 hours of work with
children with autism.
However, once they take a
closer look, parents will quickly come to realize that Autism
Step’s promise of “walking your child out of autism” is nothing
more than a lie.
In fact, there are six simple
reasons why choosing Autism Step would be the wrong step for
parents of children with autism.
#6. Autism Step Is Only Established in
2014
Autism Step claims to be “a
team of highly trained and experienced therapists”. However, it is
a company that is only established recently in
2014.
How realistic would it be for
such a newly established centre to attract experienced therapists
to join its team? Is it even possible that this newcomer to the
industry can actually have the resources to provide high levels of
training to its current staff?
Far more likely is the reality
that most of its staff are new and inexperienced therapists who
have very little experience or training to work with
children.
In fact, the majority of its
staff are put on short-term 3-month contracts so the company can
cut costs by avoiding the need to provide them with medical and
other benefits.
Since most of its therapists
are basically contract workers, there is very little incentive for
them to perform their best as they expect to leave the company very
soon. The turnover is high and this becomes very disruptive for the
child as not a single therapist can stay long enough to form a
close enough bond with him or her so that the child can trust the
therapist enough to work closely with the
therapist.
Would you actually trust such a
centre to provide the best outcome for your child?
#5. Autism Step Doesn’t Have An
Office
Autism
Step only offers 1 to
1 home-based therapy. On the surface, this would seem to be the
best form of therapy for the child. The child receives the sole
undivided attention of the therapist while parents would welcome
the convenience of having the therapist come to their home rather
than go through the hassle of sending and fetching their child from
the therapy centre.
However, because the child
never gets to socialize with peers in a centre-based setting, the
child would still lack the socialization skills necessary to make
it to mainstream schools.
Most galling of all though is
the reason why Autism Step only offers 1 to
1 home-based therapy.
It is that they do not even
have an office!
Even though they have an office
address listed on their website, this is actually a virtual office
and they do not welcome you walking in to this address unannounced.
As listed by their own website, meetings are only by appointment.
Why? Because they need to arrange with the actual owner of the
office to book the office space to even get to use it! Obviously,
they have no wish to disclose this fact to the public
online.
Without an actual physical
office, Autism Step is no different from any fly-by-night business
that can easily end its operations the very next day. At particular
risk are parents who stand to lose thousands in therapy fees paid
for in advance if Autism Step should suddenly close
down.
#4. Cutting Costs & Cutting Corners To
Increase Profit Margins
Not having an office is only
just the tip of the iceberg for Autism Step in their efforts to
pare operating costs to the minimum so as to increase
profits.
As mentioned earlier, they
provide their staff only with short-term contracts so they need not
provide medical and other benefits for them.
Due to their overriding need to
cut costs, Autism Step also provides no training to their staff.
This only makes sense to them because their staff are on such short
tenures that there is no point training them for them just to leave
the company soon afterwards.
With their less than attractive
terms of employment and no provision of training to their staff, it
is little wonder then that the company would be looking for the
majority of their staff in new, inexperienced and unskilled
therapists who only just entered the industry looking for their
first job and could be more easily exploited.
Occasionally, they may get to
hire second-rate former staff from other companies in the industry.
Putting aside the fact their less than satisfactory work
performance that inevitably led to their exit from their former
companies, these substandard therapists also practise different
approaches to autism treatment and therapy. As a result, there can
no hope of consistency in methods used by the Autism Step
therapists.
With such constant flux and
change in the company staff and the inexperience and lack of
training of the therapists employed there, could parents reasonably
expect their child to receive the best treatment and attention at
Autism Step? Of course not.
However, Autism Step has a
secret “weapon” to get business.
#3. Relentless Marketing & Buying
Awards
With Autism Step working so
hard to cut costs, how could it actually attract the attention and
business of parents looking for early intervention services for
their child.
This, here, is the crux of
Autism Step’s strategy. By cutting costs and corners in many areas
of their business and therapy services, they are able to put most
of their money and resources into marketing their business so they
can buy their way into the spotlight of the industry and gain
parents’ attention and business.
They do so by spending heavily
online, setting aside a hefty budget for Adwords advertising so
their ads could appear at or near the top in parents’ search
results for autism treatment centres.
They also spend money to set up
alliances and partnerships with other companies so they can appear
reputable and established in the shortest time possible and then
placing these alliances and partnerships prominently on their
website.
Autism Step even went the extra
mile by using money to buy the award of “Best in Early Intervention
Programmes for Children with Autism” from Parent’s World Magazine,
which is about the only way they could be “best” in anything to do
with autism treatment, considering the way that they run their
business.
In the light of these
revelations, Autism Step’s clinical director Zhang Liyuan’s feature
of being one of Asia’s top entrepreneurs also becomes highly
suspect as it is just as likely that he bought the publicity for
himself and his business.
#2. Meaningless
Endorsements
Placed prominently on their
website homepage is an endorsement from Dr Veerasamy Senthamil Selvan, who is
indeed a senior consultant from Khoo Teck Puat Hospital.
However, a simple cursory check
online quickly reveals that Dr Veerasamy Senthamil Selvan has
nothing whatsoever to do with autism treatment and therapy services
at all.
The website at Khoo Teck Puat
Hospital lists his medical speciality as internal medicine. Even
his own professed special interest listed on the website is
actually general nephrology, a specialty of medicine and pediatrics
that concerns itself with the study and treatment of kidney
problems, something that has nothing whatsoever to do with autism
or autism treatment at all.
This again is a common trick
employed by Autism Step to attempt to plaster a veneer of
respectability to its business.
On the surface, an endorsement
by a practicing qualified medical doctor would seem to be very
impressive. However, scratch the surface, and it quickly becomes
apparent that the endorsement by this doctor who has no medical or
professional experience in treating autism at all is as worthless
as the 1-cent coin in Singapore.
#1. Lies and Exaggerated
Claims
Now that we are familiar with
the trickeries and deception practiced by Autism Step in its
attempts to get customers, we can begin to start looking at the
lies and exaggerated claims made by its clinical director Zhang
Liyuan himself.
Featured prominently on his
“About” page is his claim that he has accrued more than 20,000
hours of working with children with autism. This is plainly false
and a lie as Zhang Liyuan himself is only in his 30s this year.
Unless, Zhang Liyuan started working with children with autism even
before he was born when he was still in his mother’s womb, it is
highly unlikely and almost impossible for him to attain 20,000
hours of work with children with autism even if he simply includes
all the coursework hours he has had with children while majoring in
his bachelor’s degree in psychology and any other volunteer work he
has done.
The sheer audacity of his lie
reveals a profiteer who only seeks to make a quick buck off parents
by hoping to hoodwink them in believing that his lineless youthful
baby face could actually represent that of a figure of authority in
the field of autism treatment and therapy.
In actual fact, simply getting
a bachelor’s degree in psychology like what Zhang Liyuan has done
does not qualify him as a service provider of autism therapy at
all.
In his desperation to get
credibility and reputability for himself and his business, he has
to resort to heavy marketing and buying awards and endorsements and
alliances so he could actually hope to make it in the industry
itself.
After going through all these
reasons and revelations behind Autism Step, it should be little
wonder now why Autism Step would be the wrong step for the parent
looking for a quality autism treatment centre for their child.