Autism Center of Virginia Registry

Virginia Commonwealth University

    The Autism Center of Virginia (ACV) was established in 1998 to provide unique services to children with autism and their families living in the commonwealth of Virginia. Prior to the emergence of the ACV, autism-resource centers and supportive organizations across the state offered information and referral assistance to these families, and public school districts supplied certain early intervention and special education services. However, many parents of children with autism were lost in the search to secure rigorous and consistent therapies, not typically offered in the school system, for their children that yielded clearly positive outcomes. Additionally, there was no organized entity in Virginia that afforded specialized training to those individuals interested in working therapeutically and/or educationally with children with autism, nor was there any epidemiologic record of the numbers of individuals affected with autism across the state.

      The impetus behind the ACV was the Faison family, namely their daughter, Brittany, who was diagnosed with autism at 18 months of age. After discovering Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) as an empirically supported, effective therapy for children with autism, the Faisons found themselves in a constant struggle trying to secure ABA services for their daughter, even going so far as to fly in professionals from out-of-state on a regular basis to conduct the therapy. Because of the positive results they were noticing in Brittany yet the difficulty maintaining this therapeutic routine, Brittany’s grandparents, Alan Kirshner and Flo Guzman, embarked on a mission to encourage the development of ABA services in the community, not only for the benefit of their own family but for that of other families of children with autism who would otherwise not have access to ABA treatment. Because of their philanthropic efforts and partnership with the Department of Psychiatry in the Health Systems Center at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), the Autism Center of Virginia was born.

In addition to the educational and therapeutic services for the children that were created through the center, a training component for parents and professionals working with individuals with autism and a research component that included the development of an autism registry were also developed. Such a triumvirate approach satisfied (a) the immediate intervention needs of the children with autism, (b) the desire to increase the number of qualified ABA therapists in the community (and eventually throughout the commonwealth), and (c) the need to promote research efforts in the area of autism by organizing a database of affected individuals across the state of Virginia.

ACV provides training to parents, direct service providers, teachers, psychologists, and researchers for careers in autism: