Gill Higgins was correct to say that therapy based on principles of ABA has the strongest evidence base for any therapy recommended for autism. There was mention of the New Zealand Autism Spectrum Guideline which the Ministry of Health had used to provide an answer to Gill’s question to them about why Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention (EIBI) is not funded in New Zealand. The quote attributed to Min of Health from ASD Guideline provided was not relevant to the question.

The ASD Guideline attracted national and international negative reaction from behaviour analysts when it was first published in draft form in 2006. Although that did appear to prompt the Ministries of Health and of Education to remove the words “evidence-based” from the title of the Guideline when it was published in April 2008, they did not change any of the multiple errors in the publication. However, the Ministries had started to contract two independent reviews of the evidence regarding ABA for ASD in November 2007. In May 2010 following Ministries’ review of the reviews, the Ministries published “ New Zealand Autism Spectrum Disorder Guideline: Supplementary Evidence on Applied Behaviour Analysis” on their websites (available at http://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/pages/supplementary_paper_to_nz_asd_guideline_applied_behaviour_analysis_final.pdf ).

Despite there being evidence from the reviews for a stronger statement on EIBI, the supplement to the Guideline made a new recommendation: “Early intensive behavioural intervention (EIBI) should be considered as a treatment of value for young children with ASD to improve outcomes such as cognitive ability, language skills, and adaptive behaviour”. Additionally, regarding ABA for ASD in general another supplementary recommendation is: “Interventions and strategies based on applied behaviour analysis (ABA) principles should be considered for all children with ASD”.

Nevertheless, neither the Health or Education Ministries state what they would do if professionals or families consider that EIBI would be valuable for a particular child. As far as I know, nothing. They seem to be ignoring their Guideline selectively against EIBI and ABA.