THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE FACILITATED COMMUNICATION (FC) PROGRAM ON THE QUALITY OF TEACHING AND COMMUNICATION OF TEACHERS FOR AUTISM THERAPISTS

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), particularly those who are nonverbal or have limited verbal ability, experience substantial communication barriers that affect their participation in educational and social environments. One intervention used to address these barriers is Facilitated Communication (FC), an facilitated communication technique in which a facilitator provides physical support to an individual's hand, wrist, or arm while the individual points to or types letters, words, or symbols on a communication device. This study examined the effect of an FC training program on the teaching quality and communication of therapists working with children with ASD at Yakita School, Medan. A quasi-experimental two-group pretest-posttest design was used, involving two groups of therapists: those with prior FC experience (experimental group, n = 4) and those without FC experience (control group, n = 4). Data were collected using a teacher/therapist competency questionnaire, based on the four teacher-competency domains in Indonesian Ministerial Regulation No. 16 of 2007 (pedagogical, professional, social, and personality competence), and a communication questionnaire built around the Respect, Empathy, Audible, Clarity, and Humble (REACH) principles. Data were analyzed using the Shapiro-Wilk normality test and the Paired Sample t-Test. Descriptive analysis showed that mean communication scores increased from 144.50 to 174.80 (a 20.97% increase), and mean competency scores increased from 192.30 to 230.00 (a 19.60% increase) in the group that received FC training. The paired-sample t-test showed that the experimental group improved significantly (p < .05) on all four competency dimensions and all five communication dimensions, whereas the control group showed a significant improvement on only three of the eleven variables (personality competence, empathy, and overall competence). These findings indicate that structured FC training contributes meaningfully to improving the competency and communication quality of autism therapists, beyond what routine teaching experience alone produces.