Facilitated Communication Not Reliable

In Re D (A Child) (Evidence: Facilitated Communication) (TLR 26 July FD)

Facilitated communication is a treatment for autism, emerging in the early 1990s in Australia and the United States, whereby a facilitator, or helper, supported the hand or arm of a communicatively impaired person while using a keyboard or typing device. In 1994 the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution that ‘facilitated communication is a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy’. It was clear that without a great deal more evidence on facilitated communication it would be dangerous for a court to rely upon any evidence provided by such means and it should be viewed with the greatest possible