The students who receive services from Spectrum of Hope will arrive already having various diagnoses from other sources, such as developmental psychologists, pediatric psychiatrists, etc. To us, "autism" simply is a helpful label that provides a very general description of an individual's behavioral dysfunction. Obtaining a diagnosis, however, is only the beginning, and is certainly not a solution of any kind. As described above, applied behavior analysis is extremely effective regardless of the general clinical terms used to describe overall behavioral patterns. For us, the resources (i.e. time and money) that parents would have to give to determine whether their child meets clinical criteria for a particular diagnosis would be better used for therapeutic purposes. Again, diagnosis is not as important to us, because each child's abilities and behavior problems (regardless of clinical diagnosis) are analyzed individually to determine academic and clinical goals based on their own behavior relative to typical peers, parent expectations, and their own prerequisite skills.