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Thursday, August 28, 2008
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Consulting Services
  Smart START™  ~   Program Model  ~   Services Offered

Services Offered

    Initial Telephone Consultation
    This consultation is free of charge and is designed to help you decide if our organization can meet your needs and expectations.

    Initial Home Consultation
    The initial home consultation with your consultant is an important part of the process of setting up your child's ABA program. During this consultation, we will come to your home to interact with and observe your child, review relevant data and give an overview of what Pieces of the Puzzle has to offer. At this meeting, we will gladly answer any remaining questions you may have and begin the all-important process of building a rapport with your child.

    Training
    Because consistency is crucial to the success of any early intervention program, it is our philosophy that everyone who works with one of "our" kids should have at least a basic understanding of what is going on in his or her home program. To that end, your consultant can provide training for therapists, family members and anyone else who will be working with or spending a lot of time with your child. This training will include an overview of the particular interventions being employed, specific techniques utilized in each skill area and ways to handle and/or extinguish self-stimulatory, self-injurious or other problem behaviors that surface along the way.

    Skills Assessment
    Establishing current levels of performance is crucial to program development and initial implementation, as it identifies current level of functioning in each skill level. Assessment data also acts as a baseline to be used in determining early program performance. Following the assessment, you will receive a written report.

    Reinforcer Assessment
    Keeping the level of reinforcement high is crucial to the therapist / child relationship as well as to the success of the program. Some parents find it difficult to say what is most reinforcing to their child, especially early on in the intervention process. In order to help you determine what is most reinforcing to your child, our consultants can come to your home to perform a reinforcer assessment. After the assessment you will receive a written report detailing the findings and recommendations for development of an individualized reinforcement hierarchy. Of course, a less formal way to do this is to use training time to work on this as well.

    Program Development / Initial Implementation
    Your consultant will use all available data and assessments, as well as other anecdotal information to develop a program tailored specifically to your child's needs. During the initial implementation, there will likely be a period of adjustment during which time your child and therapists will become accustomed to the work and build a relationship of fun and trust. The consultant's experience will be a great deal of help to all concerned during this time. Of course, planning and development are continual processes throughout the life of any ABA program.

    Program Supervision
    Proper supervision of the home program enables it to run at peak efficiency, ensuring that no time is wasted - which is extremely important in the field of early intervention. This is why one of the consultant's key functions is supervisory in nature. The consultant must ensure that individual programs are being implemented as intended, that appropriate materials and instructional methods are being utilized, and must be made aware of and step in to resolve any unforeseen problems that arise. Supervisory functions can be performed in a number of ways, from analyzing weekly data to directly supervising therapists and can be tailored to the needs of each family.

    Program Tracking
    We recommend that parents spend time tracking and analyzing the progress of their child's program in order to be fully informed and involved; however, some simply do not have the time and/or analytical skills to do this. For those clients we offer the service of tracking the data from your child's program and reporting on the data obtained by your therapists. You simply fax or email us your data sheets and we will do the rest.

    Team Meetings
    Team meetings are very important to the program overall because they ensure continuity and uniformity in the program. Each home program on the consultant's case load should have meetings scheduled at regular intervals (usually bi-weekly or monthly). At these meetings the consultant reviews previously mastered programs to ensure that they are generalized and discusses the progress of the child with the family and therapists. This is also usually the time during which new programs are introduced, so it is important that all therapists attend.

    Therapy
    We do not currently recruit therapists for the families with whom our consultants work; however, we will be happy to forward any resumes we receive to families we know are in need of therapists. Any reference checks, background checks, etc. that you think are necessary as well as interviewing the person will be completely at your discretion. Additionally, our consultants believe that doing therapy themselves is of benefit to them professionally and to the children they work with as well; therefore, assuming that your consultant has time available, it is quite possible that she will be able to do occasional therapy with your child.

    Video Feedback
    It is a good idea to periodically videotape therapy sessions as a way of marking progress and making sure that the programs are being implemented correctly. Being able to share therapy footage with other providers can be helpful in various ways such as providing language samples for Speech Language Pathologists and showing school personnel the level of functioning of the child in the home setting. Additionally, our consultants can provide the service of watching video footage of your child in therapy and at other times so that they can offer advice to therapists and programming relevant to areas of the child's life that otherwise may not have come up in discussions with the consultant. One example of the value of this is in the area of problem behaviors. Seeing the situation unfold on screen can help the consultant to see what the cause of the behavior is and therefore be much more successful in devising a plan to deal with it effectively.

    Potty Training
    Potty training can be a very difficult and stressful part of raising a child on the Autism Spectrum, but our consultants have had a great deal of success potty training children at various levels of functioning. They use time-tested behaviorally based procedures, and are available for extended periods of time to work with your child. They can also train you and any caregivers you have in their methods so that the process is as quick and stress free as possible for all concerned.

    Email/Telephone Consultations
    We understand that there are high costs associated with helping your child recover from autism. As such, we offer telephone and email contact with your consultant billed in fifteen minute increments to serve the dual purpose of having greater availability of our attention and saving you money when you only need a little of our time and expertise.

    Long Distance Clients
    Pieces of the Puzzle consultants have had a great deal of success in working with clients that they rarely see in person. While it takes a greater effort on the part of the parents and therapists involved, we do offer most of our services to long distance clients through the use of various technologies, depending on the situation.

    School Shadow Training
    Shadowing can be a very important element of programming because it helps to ensure that skills learned in one environment are generalized and carried over into others. As such, we will train one or more of your team members to implement home program strategies in the school environment. Training in the proper prompting and prompt fading techniques is very important in order for your child to reap maximum benefit from the presence of the shadow.

    School Observations
    Our consultants can, at your request and in accordance with school policies, perform observations of your child in the school environment. Observations can be helpful in a number of ways such as obtaining the level of generalization of targets mastered at home, ascertaining the need for additional interventions in the school environment, obtaining information regarding your child's level of functioning at school, and in providing us with information that we can use to be of help to you in the IEP process. Observations done by our consultants will result in written reports that can be used for a variety of purposes.

    IEP Development/Attendance
    Your consultant can offer advice in all areas of IEP development including accommodations and modifications, wording of goals and objectives, breaking down criteria so that the goals are measurable, and prioritizing what you request through the school system to maximize the benefit to your child.

    Speech and Language Pathology
    At Pieces of the Puzzle we believe that Speech Language Pathology functions as an Integral part of the success of your child’s program. Accordingly, your program consultant will work as closely with your child's SLP as you would like. While we do not offer ongoing speech services, we do offer speech and language assessments and recommendations for your home programming needs from a highly qualified (MA, CCC-SLP) speech language pathologist on our staff. She has extensive experience working with children with autism and has a child on the spectrum herself.

Smart START™  ~   Program Model  ~   Services Offered



 

 
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