Anyone believe that Facilitated Communication Works?

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I'm sure it works for people with muscle control problems but it's a cruel thing to do to a non verbal person with autism. Non verbal autistic people have a hard enough time trying to communicate but to force words into their mouth my playing ouija board with their hands is enough to drive them off the deep end, imo.

I'm just surprised that FC is still making the rounds.

Me too! Its validity was always questioned, but then studies proved that it was ineffective. The "facilitator" was doing all the communicating. FC and its failure was traumatic for many families. At least one person was convicted of abuse based on allegations made through FC.

It was invented by a professor at my school, Syracuse University. He does not support it anymore because it has been disproven.

It's shocking that anyone still engages in this practice. I hope it's a rare occurence.

i definitely believe that there are people out there who want to communicate that aren't able to because of their physical limitations......but FC????? NO

There was a major conference here where the keynote "speaker" was an autistic woman doing FC. This conference had some good stuff that could help me but I was shocked that they were so clueless about getting that keynote speaker. I let them know what I thought. They wrote back and told me that I'd be welcome to make my views known at the confernce.

Right.... I'm picturing a bunch of tearful parents watching all that profound prose coming from a non verbal woman and it's like a big emotional revivial. I'd be real welcome. I hope that I wasn't the only one to complain.

i think it must be very easy for parents of non-verbal individuals to latch onto FC.......that they want to believe that it works.
there are definitely other methods out there to help individuals communicate~ GoTalks, Communication boards etc....

When FC first became popular, I knew my daughter wouldn't be talking about what they were making her say. I wanted to tell them to ask her the name of her beloved dog but I got intimidated because everyone around me was so emotional like this was a miracle. Her classroom teacher bought into it. We told the teacher not to do FC with our daughter. She did anyway.

And... we got a call from the county saying that our daughter was sexually abused. Maybe the teacher had subconsicously decided that we had something hide so that's why my daughter FC'd it. It was proven without a doubt that she wasn't sexually abused. The stupid teacher should realize that if you sexually abuse an autistic person and say "this is our little secret" it wouldn't work. They would act out in some way.

My daughter was so funny when she made her desires known about FC. Whenever anyone got near her with the FC board, she'd role her eyes, groan, get down on the floor and role into a ball, keeping her hands inaccessible.

FC is mostly disproven but there are some autistics that have learned to type on their own due to FC. The goal is to help them type independently.
I believe Sue Rubin and Tito Mukhopadhyay both learned this way. I'm pretty sure Tito types independently now.
I think Dr. Temple Grandin said it has a 5% success rate. Which sounds low.