In 1999, through Resolution No. 23, the Director of Training of the Secretary of Health of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, Dr. Nestor Perez Baliño, appointed Lic. Daniel Orlievsky and Lic. Susana Massun as “Teaching Coordinators of the Program of Communicational Rehabilitation ”at the Dra. Carolina Tobar García Children’s Hospital”.

From 2001 to 2010, three Research Projects were carried out with a UBACyT subsidy, within the framework of an agreement signed between the Hospital “Dra. Carolina Tobar García ”and the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Buenos Aires.

The work, carried out by the Communicational Rehabilitation Program and the II Chair of Evolutionary Psychology: Childhood, has contributed to the knowledge about language, communication and psychic structuring of people with  major developmental disorders, receiving an Award from the Faculty of Psychology of the UBA in 2005 as “Contributions of Psychology to the Problems of Childhood”.

In 2010, the Tobar García Hospital Management decided to call for a competition for the appointment of two staff professionals to work exclusively in the Communicational Rehabilitation Program, processing said competitions in 2011 and making the appointments of Dr. Damián Borda and the Dr. Etelvina Wessolowski in 2012.

The Program consists of helping people with autism, specifically those without speech or with minimal speech, whose oral language does not serve them for the purposes of communication.

In addition to autism, people with other developmental conditions have been included in this program. People who have these difficulties can communicate through writing with a computer or other similar device.

Since the Program was launched, it has been found that certain people have made notable progress in language and communication.

These advances vary from people who have achieved a remarkable development in their writing to those who manage to write although in a restricted way or even there are those who have not achieved significant changes. However, in almost all cases, significant changes in learning have been observed.

It has also been found that the language developed in each case may vary with respect to its content as well as the presence of different language and communication disorders.

In most cases, the existence of an important difference between oral language and written language is evident.

One of the fundamental hypotheses for the implementation of the Program and in the research is the importance of writing and its effects on subjectivity.

As a consequence of the implementation of the Program, significant changes in behavior were found in most of the participants, as well as some who began to speak after the acquisition of writing.

In other words, clinically significant improvements could be observed for a percentage of people affected by these problems, specifically in the area of ​​language as well as in the areas of ​​behavior and subjective structuring.

The importance of the Program lies in the benefits that certain participants can achieve, among which  are language acquisition that enables them to improve their social inclusion, have access to some type of educational integration as well as allowing them fundamental progress in their quality of life.

The clinical results obtained in the Program and the corresponding contributions of the research projects have aroused interest both in the country and abroad. Practitioners of the Program have received invitations to present their work at prestigious universities including the Autonomous University of Madrid, University of Barcelona, ​​University of Gerona, Ramon Llull, St. John’s University and  New York University (NYU).

In May 2008, 2010 and 2011 presentations were made at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, MA. 

In the first activity, organized as a meeting exclusively for researchers and as a sign of the interest aroused in the scientific community by the results of the program, professionals from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston were present as well as representatives from  Environmental Health Advisory Board of the Autism Society of America,the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, the Autism Treatment Network, Autism Research Foundation, Autism Research Consortium, Department of Human Development at Cornell University, School of Education and Syracuse University.

The Program was attended by Dr. Daniel Orlievsky, Teaching Coordinator of the Communicational Rehabilitation Program and Co-Director of the aforementioned UBACyT Research Projects, and Dr. Susana Massun (Teaching Coordinator of the Program) and Dr. Sebastián Cukier,  physician from the Tobar García Hospital, both researchers from the aforementioned UBACyT projects.

In September 2008, Dr. Matthew Goodwin, at that time Clinical Director of the MIT Media Lab, traveled to Buenos Aires to observe in person the work in the hospital, checking the clinical results obtained in the Writing Program that include progress in language and changes in behavior in assisted patients.

MIT Media Lab Director Rosalind Picard donated autonomic sensors of the central nervous system to the Program to be used by the Communicational Rehabilitation Program and also delivered two XO Laptops, developed by the Media Lab, because of her positive response to what she observed.

This technology from the MIT Multimedia Laboratory (Media Lab) serves to increase social-emotional understanding and communication in people on the autism spectrum.

Some of these technologies include telemetric sensors of the nervous system capable of recording physiological stress indices (heart rate, skin conductivity, temperature) without wires; wearable motion sensors that record stereotypies, flapping and rocking; and a system for recording and automatic analysis of facial expressions of the patient and the person with whom he interacts. Each of these innovative technologies has the potential to enrich / increase the understanding, support and skills of people affected by different forms of autism.

With autonomic sensors, an investigation was carried out in 2011 on the changes in the levels of electro-dermal activity in a group of patients with CEA before, during and after the sessions of the Writing Program.

In 2013, the Writing Program began to function as a Team for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Developmental Disorders. Pediatric Mental Health Department of the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires.

In 2018, an investigation was carried out at the Neuroscience Laboratory of Rutgers University. N.J. under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Torres, who is also director  of  the New Jersey Autism Center for Excellence. Sensors were used to record motor skills and general movement.

This data can be used to understand a child’s biorhythms and the overall functioning of his nervous system by exploring levels of intentionality, stress, and whether certain therapeutic approaches are helpful, harmful, or have no effect. In addition, by mapping their faces, an attempt was made to understand their emotions during the intervention.

Also in 2018, the Writing program began to operate at Imagine Academy for Autism  in Brooklyn, New York.

Both activities were possible because at the end of 2016, the Latin American Symposium on Autism Spectrum Disorders was held in Buenos Aires at the Argentine Catholic University (UCA). The Symposium was attended by, among others, Dr. Serena Wieder and Dr. Elizabeth Torres. Both had the opportunity to observe the Program in the Tobar García and Italiano Hospitals and as a result of the visits both became interested in developing the Program in the USA.

In 2021, the Program began to operate at School 502 of the City of Trenque Lauquen in the Province of Buenos Aires.

Also in the year 2021, the first clinical work with patients began at the Comprehensive Institute of Audiology and Language of the Province of Buenos Aires (Banfield).