"The therapeutic plan for children who benefit from ABA (acronym for Applied Behavioral Analysis) must be tailor-made for the minor, hours cannot be assigned for treatment without taking into account the level of severity and need for support of each case. This is what is established by a sentence that I read with pleasure and that re-establishes the centrality of the child with autism, without falling into technicalities".
Thus the MEP Clear Gemma (Ecr-FdI) on the ruling of the Campania Regional Administrative Court that in July had annulled regional resolution 131. «The ruling is also a symptom of a regional policy in Campania that needs to be reviewed – Gemma points out – because it apparently does not put the individual with his or her different abilities at the centre».
Contested and discussed since its inception, resolution 131 on the diagnostic therapeutic care pathway for the global and integrated care of people with autism spectrum disorders in developmental age (which had cut the hours of therapy for some children with autism), was also denied by the judges of the Administrative Court, to whom more than ten cases on the issue were submitted.
"I know families struggling with legal actions who, in addition to managing their children's disabilities, have to chase monthly check-ups, therapies and, now, also face administrative proceedings," the MEP continues. "I'm thinking of the family of Alfredo, an autistic boy I met in Casal di Principe who had to return from vacation for a visit scheduled at the Caserta ASL on August 10."
In this context, the TAR ruling «which accepted the objections of the seventh and eighth grounds of appeal, where the violation of the obligation to provide reasons by the therapeutic project is complained of, fits in. The child in question had been assigned only eight hours of ABA therapy, without an analytical explanation. The appeal had been filed by a parent defended by the lawyer Luigi Adinolfi against the Campania Region.
The sentence highlights, in addition to the illegitimacy, the contradictory nature of the regional resolution to which the Caserta ASL would have conformed in determining a maximum number of hours of intervention based on age groups, regardless of the specific characteristics of the minor's syndrome and the need for individualized treatment as reported in the ministerial guidelines that preclude the Region from providing services below the standard of essential levels of assistance under state jurisdiction. This time too - concludes Gemma - an indication that should be provided by politics is entrusted to the judiciary".
EDITORIAL TEAM
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