There have been many publications and news stories lately about Facilitated Communication. At one time there seemed to be a fear among proponents of Augmentative Communication that Facilitated Communication would interfere with their methods. It even went so far as to really push Facilitated Communication out of use due to people's fears.
It is my belief that both are merely tools that we are trying to provide to a group of people who desparately need better means of communication, and in reality we should think that the more tools the better.
Some fear is created because Facilitated Communication is not understood. And that seems to scare people and to make them think it must be artificial or faked. Yet what really would be the purpose of the Facilitators or teachers to fake what they do or what they find. No one is so blind that they can't see if it was false it will show itself.
Another thing that I also must say about this issue is that it has often been sited that it is wrong because it gets parents hopes up so high only to be let down. Often this is spoken by people who were never in the parents position. As parents we always have ups and downs, we will have wonderful successes, seeming almost like miracles and we will have failures that do hurt. Is that any reason to not accept something or not try? Being a parent, my emphatic answer is "NO, Don't worry about me, keep trying to help my child and others."
The failure to have the tools to communicate is a huge detriment to these people, and we need to try to help them and really help ourselves learn to communicate with them.
I am a proponent of Facilitiated Communication. In light of that if you try to add a link referring to one of the studies that were meant to belittle Facilitated Communication I am very likely to refuse to post it. I have found the arguments against it to be too narrow, unwilling and unable to look at counter findings and I have seen through first hand knowledge how unfair part of that destroying of the credibility of FC was attempted. I feel it was unfair, and maybe I won't be exactly fair either, but I believe that there may be thinks about FC we do not understand, just like there are many things about religion we cannot know, yet we all live by a code that exists with no proof, with proof that may be just as flimsy as all that has been presented regarding FC.
Many other proponents of FC may not exactly even like my reasoning, they perhaps might say that why not use the proof that is there, research studies, and such. I say fine, we can use them, but FC is really not hurting anyone. The few cases of false accusations involved with FC should have been handled differently and there should have been other tools brought in to study the psychology that was involved. However I feel that there is definitely something to FC. We may not understand how but people who now do type independently (and yes there are a growing number!) show us that it can work.
I do believe that we cannot let it be thought of as a cure all, or a one size fits all solution. I do not believe it is, I believe just like with other therapies, the therapy depends on the person who it is being applied to and no matter the label there are always a wide variety of presentation. FC has been associated with Autism, and Autism really is not metabolically diagnosable yet. It may not be far off in the future, but so far almost all cases of Autism and Aspergers are diagnosed by a professional observation of behavior. As we progress and we see more and more cases we find different subdivisions and some have even split off from the label within the last 15 years.
When we find that every case of Autism and Aspergers is the same, when the cause is always the same and every child has the same set of chemical deficiencies, maybe I will believe that idea, but I do not believe that will happen, and in light of that I think we need to still look for many tools for many types of autism.
FC is just one method, Augmentative Communication may be another, and it may even fit in alongside each other. Too often in this field and in many others it seems that people look to one answer excluding the rest. That is not Fair to the people who are burdened with this communication difficulty.
Thank you, Raymond J. Kopp Note: do not bother trying to write to me to debate the above issues. I will not answer because I have seen FC work and I know it's a true method.