Understand The Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS)

Yesterday I finally got my sons evaluation scores back. In reality you know what they will say and expect to see the low scores but seeing it on paper just kind of makes it more surreal. That is if you can understand the things. 

They used the CARS-The Childhood Autism Rating Scale

Here they evaluate the child on 15 areas

• Relating to people
• Imitation
• Emotional response
• Body use
• Object use
• Adaptation to change
• Visual response
• Listening response
• Taste, smell, and touch response and use
• Fear or nervousness
• Verbal communication
• Nonverbal communication
• Activity level
• Level and consistency of intellectual response
• General impressions

The child is then scored on a scale of 1-4 on each of these tasks, half points are also rewarded. 

1 is normal for the childs age

2 is mildly abnormal

3 is moderately abnormal

4 is severely abnormal

After this they total it all up. The scores range from 15 to 60 30 being the cutoff range. Scores 30 to 37 indicates Mild to Moderate Autism, 38 to 60 is indication of Severe Autism.

 My son scored a 43.5 which placed him in the moderately to severe. General impression scored 3 which is Moderate Autism

Then here it is, in black and white--Logan exhibits the symptoms consistent with the diagnosis of 299.00 Autistic disorder (per DSM-5 299.00 Autism Spectrum Disorder, Level 2). 

This is not the only test they administered but I guess it is the one that plays the main factor in a diagnosis.  Logan needs a lot of speech therapy because he is non-verbal and this made a difference in his scores. 

Our next step is to fill out an application for the Autism Waiver Program for more therapies in the home. He will receive those and the ones at school as well, that is if he is approved. (keep fingers crossed) 

It seems like a lot of therapies but early intervention is important. Maybe someday Logan will find his voice.