The Assessment of Functional Living Skills — also known as AFLS — is an incredibly versatile assessment system for individuals with autism spectrum disorder because it offers a pathway to independence to all learners, providing them with the skills and confidence they need to be independent in everyday life. It works because it can be used any time, anywhere and covers skills critical to becoming independent. It is also easy to understand and simple to use. In other words, if you have someone in your life that would benefit from developing daily living skills, this might just be the answer you’re looking for.
Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or caregiver, the AFLS can be shared with anyone because it is intended to be worked on collaboratively with task selection and the administration of the assessment. In fact, this system was made to allow parents, educators, and professionals to create meaningful and successful programs that aid individuals with the successful acquisition of skills.
There are a total of six AFLS Protocols that cover various skill sets. Customers can mix and match protocols to create a set of teaching companions specific to a learner’s needs. The AFLS is not only a criterion-referenced skills assessment tool, but also a tracking system, and curriculum guide. As we mentioned above, it can be used for teaching children, adolescents, and adults alike, making it ideal for anyone! Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (also known as ASD) tend to have difficulty in some areas and success in others. Because every person is unique, our goal is to provide people with the tools they need for success.
The Benefits of the Assessment of Functional Living Skills
The Assessment of Functional Living Skills is a criterion-referenced skills assessment tool, tracking system, and curriculum guide. AFLS is used for teaching people with developmental disabilities the essential skills they need in order to achieve the most independent outcomes.
By including goals and a scorable program, it’s easy to identify the various goals and objectives specific to a learner. When he or she has unique needs, the AFLS offers a number of checklists to help show where progress is being made. If you’re looking for ways to develop successful programs for your learners, this is a great way to do it while seeing positive results incredibly quickly.
What Is the AFLS?
A Look at the Protocols
If you’ve ever had a hard time finding the best tactics for teaching living skills to people with autism or other developmental disabilities, the protocols we’ve come up with can help. Functional Living Skills is here to help you provide your learners with all of the skills he or she needs to succeed.
With our 6 books covering different protocols, we can help provide your learner with a pathway to independence. The AFLS includes protocols for Basic Living Skills, Home Skills, Community Participation Skills, School Skills, Vocational Skills, and Independent Living Skills.
For example, the Basic Living Skills Protocol Basic Living Skills Protocol analyzes essential living skills, which set the foundation in place for learners to increase their ability for success in their home, school, and community across their lifespan. The AFLS Basic Living Skills protocol is comprised of many different areas. Not only does our protocol examine toileting, grooming, and dressing skills, but also health, safety, and first aid skills.
Part of what you can expect from this protocol is that it teaches bathing skills. This includes subjects such as tub management, shower management, and water temperature. It also includes skills like washing & drying your hair and cleaning up the area after you are done. It even teaches communication skills such as how to request breaks and how to follow directions with multiple steps. The end result is a helpful lesson about how to answer important questions about one’s life and immediate environment.
The AFLS Guide
A necessary component for each of the protocols is the AFLS Guide. The AFLS is made up of a guide in addition to the protocols that assess functional, practical, and essential skills of everyday life. Each of these protocols can be used on their own, but they’re also incredibly useful when used in conjunction with one another, covering a multitude of areas within the learner’s life in home, school, and community settings. Each protocol offers unique but connected themes and overarching goals for maximizing a learner’s freedom, independence, and opportunities.
This allows you to put together multiple protocols and make a completely custom assessment suited to the unique needs of your learner.
The AFLS Guide is a teaching companion that contains task analyses, teaching suggestions, and prompting strategies that complement the rest of the protocols. It provides information about the features of the AFLS system, including scoring, program development, and identifying goals and objectives while addressing the learner’s specific needs. It’s a critical component of the accompanying six protocols, serving as the pathway as the learner’s ability becomes reality. It’s easy to use for children, adolescents, and adults. Speaking of which…
Who Can Use the Assessment of Functional Living Skills?
The AFLS is designed to be used by anyone seeking to foster a pathway to independence for the learners in their lives. Whether you’re a professional caregiver, an educator, or a parent of someone with autism, our protocols are designed to help you. With measurable progress, the end result is the development of daily living skills.
Scoring grids allow you to track progress and come up with a plan that suits the specific needs of you and your learner. As a matter of fact, we encourage you to share the AFLS with your learner’s school or anyone who works with your learner. Collaboration between school, other service providers, and home is worked into the design of the AFLS in order to make it the most effective method of forging a pathway to independence. In fact, educators who use the AFLS system are able to see an immediate impact in the classroom.
At the end of the day, we believe that it’s important for people to know that no matter the circumstances, our protocols are designed to offer assistance. Whether you’re seeking strategies for teaching students with learning disabilities or you work with developmentally disabled adults, we think you’ll find that the Assessment of Functional Living Skills is easy to use and understand. The fact that anyone can use it and measure the progress of their learner is part of what makes this system so unique.
Success Stories
The Assessment of Functional Living Skills was designed to produce real, tangible results. By utilizing a variety of different protocols, you can create a program of skills to suit your learner’s specific needs. Of course we love getting feedback, and that’s why we’re happy to share a few of our favorite AFLS reviews below.
As you can see, the Assessment of Functional Living Skills really does work, and it’s the fastest way to get real results. Whether your goal is to create a unique daily living skills checklist for your learner or you’re searching for a pre-vocational skills assessment to help your learner with the skills necessary before getting a job, this is the best way to do it.
Who We Are
The authors of the Assessment of Functional Living Skills have dedicated their careers to helping provide a pathway to independence to individuals with ASD and/or other developmental disabilities. We are a team dedicated to the creation of developmental tools, programs, and assessments to teach children and adults with ASD and developmental disabilities.
AFLS authors Dr. James W. Partington and Dr. Michael M. Mueller have made it their mission to offer people with developmental disabilities a pathway to independence. Dr. Partington has come to be known as a leader in the field of behaviour analysis, while Dr. Mueller is the author of four books on the subject of behavior analytics and autism skills.
Learn more about the authors of the AFLS here.
How You Can Attend a Workshop
Dr. Partington and Dr. Mueller are happy to offer training and consultations for educators, caregivers, and parents who work with people with autism spectrum disorder. Topics include how to teach skills in a natural environment, language acquisition, tactics for dealing with challenging behavior, treatments for severe behavior, and more. There’s something for everyone, and classes can be customized to suit the needs of large or small groups.
Additionally, if you are simply looking to learn more about the Assessment of Functional Living Skills, you can attend an introductory workshop. If you’re looking for a way to learn about the ins and outs of the AFLS, this is the way to do it. In these workshops, we offer knowledge, skills, and tools you can put to good use immediately to develop a program specific to the unique needs of your learner that helps them to become less dependent on help from others.
We’ll cover the nearly 2,000 skills that we believe cover the pathway to independence and attendees of these workshops will learn how to conduct assessments and track the results. The easy-to-enact methods that we’ll share in our workshop are sure to be a valuable resource for parents, teachers, and others.
About Our Research
The authors of the AFLS spent many years developing the curriculum that is available today and their unique experience in the area ensures that the checklists within can provide tangible results. As a part of the process of developing the Assessment of Functional Living Skills, Dr. Partington and Dr. Mueller works alongside teachers, parents, and caregivers to help clients gain traction.
Additionally, we utilized the help of focus groups who provided feedback about skills. The end result is a curriculum that is easy for anyone to use and track progress in.
You can learn more about the research behind the AFLS here.
Fostering a Pathway to Independence
Whether your learner has autism spectrum disorder, aspergers, or down syndrome, the Assessment of Functional Living Skills is designed to help. We believe that functional living skills are present in every aspect of everyday life and that this presents an opportunity for learning at every step of the way.
As you probably know, people with developmental disabilities have strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. Our curriculum was designed to provide you with an approach to offering helpful skills and tracking progress along the way. You don’t need to have any training in order to do this, and our easy-to-utilize guide makes approaching the AFLS easy for everyone. As we mentioned above, we encourage you to share this curriculum between all people working with your learner because the goal is to have a dynamic pathway for lifelong learning regardless of where the starting point is.
A perfect tool for anyone who is actively working with the learner, our protocols teach skills ranging from making meals at home to doing laundry to social awareness and manners to job and interview skills. In other words, it covers a wide range of topics, allowing you to tailor an approach to suit your specific needs.The end result is the ability to develop a curriculum or treatment plan in the areas that are the most relevant. With template scoring grids for each of the six protocols of the AFLS, it makes it easy to score everything electronically.
Have a question for our team? We believe that we’ve created a system that will provide you with everything you need for success, and we’d love to hear from you. Don’t hesitate to contact us.
