Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention

The Behavioural Neurotherapy Clinic is a healthcare centre that brings together experts from different fields to help children and teenagers with developmental challenges like ADHD and autism. Our team offers a range of services, including therapy, parent education and support, medical care, and advice on diet and nutrition. We provide Pivotal Response Therapy (a type of therapy based on Applied Behaviour Analysis) developed the University of California at Santa Barbara, both at our clinic and in the comfort of your home (Koegel et al., 2019).

We offer autism services that can be funded through the NDIS, as well as options that are eligible for Medicare rebates or privately funded. Here’s what we provide:

• Therapy and support with psychologists who specialise in health, behaviour, and cognitive issues
• A general practitioner for medical assessments and care
• Comprehensive autism assessments that meet Autism CRC and NDIS guidelines
• Medicare-funded psychological sessions for children (up to 10 per year, with a GP referral)
• Medicare-funded psychological sessions for parents (up to 10 per year for each parent, with a GP referral)
• Three Medicare-funded sessions towards diagnosis when referred by a paediatrician.
• Twenty Medicare-funded sessions towards autism treatment a paediatrician
• Nutritional advice and supplement plans from a dietitian or clinical nutritionist.

For families with a child on the autism spectrum or with ADHD, we offer a team-based approach. We use both developmental and behavioural strategies, focusing on what’s called Pivotal Response Treatment (PRT). Here’s how we work:

We base our Early Intensive Behaviouraal Intervntion on "Pivotal Response Therapy". Research, clinical practice and experience have shown that focusing on “pivotal” skills in children with autism leads to bigger improvements than some more traditional therapies (Koegel et al., 2019; Schreibman et al., 2015). We use a multidisciplinary approach, engaging a range of specialists, which has been shown to be especially effective for children with autism and related conditions (Myers & Johnson, 2007).

We also look at factors like lifestyle, sleep,  diet and nutrition, making recommendations to consult a dietician or clinical nutritionist if needed to help improve a child’s health and brain function. We see this  as important care for kids who often have nutritional gaps in their diet (Sathe et al., 2017). While these gaps don’t necessarily cause autism or ADHD, they can affect a child’s wellbeing and how their brain works, confounding the cause of adverse behaviours.

Our PRT therapy includes scripts for over 400 therapy targets: Usually 10 to 20 of those are selected by the psychologist to match the child's current needs and the therapy assistant and parents implement the target therapies, such as

• Improve eye contact and joint attention.
• Encourage the child to try things for themselves and stay motivated.
• Help them respond to different types of cues in their environment.
• Supporting them to start social interactions and communicate on their own.
• Fostering creative and interactive play.
• Teaching important life skills like feeding and dressing themselves.
• Helping them recognise emotions and develop empathy.

Our goal is to help every child reach their full potential, and to support families every step of the way.

Environmental relevance and generalisation of skills

Our everyday world is full of stimuli which flood all our senses constantly. To children with Autism, each of these stimuli appear to be just as meaningless as the other. This lack of “stimulus discrimination” is associated with their lack of engagement with people and with their environment. Parents, siblings, caregivers and therapists are taught to recognise when the Autistic child finds a stimulus interesting and to pair this spontaneously “discriminated stimulus” with a desirable behaviour, which is rewarded when produced.

Thus, stimulus discrimination is developmentally and environmentally relevant to the child and PRT can be carried out anywhere and at any time by trained parents, siblings and relevant others. Research indicates that PRT encourages generalisation of environmentally relevant behaviours, is more cost-effective, enables more time to be spent with the child for intensive ABA, and is financially more sustainable. 

Intensive Early intervention and Motivation

Research suggests that intentional and meaningful communication usually emerges in typical infants as “communicative others” attribute meaning to their actions. Thus infants typically learn that their behaviours, including vocalisation and socialisation, produce consequences and influence others in their environment.

Children with Autism have difficulties making these associations, due to their lack of stimulus discrimination. Hence with PRT, frequently reinforcing stimulus discrimination and associated behaviours encourages children with Autism to make the associations and increases motivation to perform the behaviour. Hence we recommend that parents and all involved with the child learn to apply PRT so that the child can have more intensive, affordable early intervention.

Pivotal Response Treatment Research

Pivotal Response Training arose in response to criticism that many traditional Discrete-Trial Learning interventions did not produce enough generalised learning. The Natural Language Teaching, now called PRT was developed by Koegel (who together with Lovass initially developed DTL) to provide a more naturalistic approach to promoting language and communication in children with Autism 

The main differences between DTL and PRT are:

• In Discrete Trial Learning the therapist rigidly controls the choice of tasks, contexts and interactions. In PRT the child sets the pace and chooses the contexts. Control of interactions is either shared or initiated by and assigned to the child. The child selects preferred activities which the therapist uses as contexts for communication exchange and learning. Almost every minute of the day offers opportunities for applying ABA therapy using PRT. Opportunities are offered by the therapist and the child is enticed to respond, rather than task selection being imposed on the child.
• PRT uses play and socialisation to focus on increasing motivation by allowing the child to chose learning contexts (encouraging initiation), reinforcing attempts at correct responses, using adequate modeling, and providing naturally desirable consequences.

Overall the therapies provided by the Clinic aim to improve the capability of children with ASD to attend formal school and participate more fully in everyday life.

Developmental and social learning interventions

This model is concerned with the building of relationships between the child and others and promoting the development of social interactions and socially related emotions. Parents and caregivers are taught that PRT can be used to assist children with Autism to develop an understanding of social roles and social events by teaching the child to be responsive to many learning opportunities and social interactions that occur in the day to day activities in their natural environment. Parents are often surprised that prior to receiving PRT training they missed important teaching opportunities and unknowingly responded in ways that confused the child, increased the child’s frustrations and tantrums and did not promote learning of new skills.

Family-based Interventions

ABA based on PRT can be delivered by trained therapists, parents, and other family members who interact with the child on a day to day basis. Hence we run training courses for therapists and family members to teach them the necessary PRT-based skills. We also work with family members to help them develop skills that are useful in coping with inappropriate behaviours and with their children’s difficulties.

Therapy-based Interventions

Communication, social development and sensory motor integration are continuously promoted through PRT by appropriately trained parents, guided by a program set by the psychologists. However there is often a need, for the involvement of the Speech Therapist and/or the Occupational therapist.

Updated on:  10/02/2026 by: Dr. Jacques Duff – BA Psych; Grad Dip Psych; PhD; MAPS; MECNS; MAAAPB; MISNR; FANSA
Reviewed on: 20/02/2026 by: Bernard Ferriere - BA; Grad Dip App Psych; Dip Clinical Hypnosis; FCCP; MAPS; MASH; Clinical Psychologist