CARD: Achievements Therapeutic Day Program
| Brian Freedman, Ph.D. | Kennedy Krieger Autism Program featured on FOX 45 "Cover Story" |
The Achievements Program at the Center for Autism and Related Disorders is designed to provide individualized treatment in a small group setting to young children (2 years and 9 months to 5 years and 11 months old) who have difficulties with communication and social interaction. Because of their important role in prognosis, the following skills have been chosen as the focus for Achievements groups: language, social communication and interaction, and self-regulatory development.
Achievements Groups are supervised by a certified speech-language pathologist and therapeutic assistant. Student-to-leader ratios are low and parent involvement is encouraged. In this setting, Achievements provides an enriching environment for social discovery through language mastery. Through careful individualization of objectives and best-practice treatment methods, our goal is for the classroom to become not only a place for learning, but a place to form friendships. Children are active participates in theme-based learning activities that provide a motivating context for targeting individualized goals and general language, social, and cognitive skills. Children immediately apply what they are learning in multiple contexts.
Achievements appreciates the individual strengths of each child and combines aspects of the most recent, research-based therapeutic techniques in order to create a program that fits each child’s needs. Multiple teaching methods, systems, and approaches are incorporated, including the following:
- Tasks are broken down into discrete, sequential steps to teach new skills using an antecedent-behavior-consequence model.
- Routines-based teaching in structured activities highlights salient information while providing repeated practice with mastered and emerging concepts.
- Skills are taught across settings and individuals to promote generalization to a more natural environment.
- Behaviors are shaped by reinforcing successive approximations toward the desired goal
- Teaching fundamental behaviors, such as motivation and responsivity to multiple cues, which allow children to acquire multiple other behaviors, so that improvement occurs in other areas without being directly targeted.
- Incidental teaching, a structured teaching approach, is designed to seize the “teachable moment” by following a child’s lead, activities, and interests during play.
- Teaching units are planned around communicative functions such as “Greetings” or “Gaining attention.” Social Stories and scripts are used to help children understand what behaviors are expected of them in social situations.
- A highly visual environment is created by utilizing photographs, symbols, and written words to scaffold language to create a consistent and predictable sequence of events, to support transitions, and to clarify task demands.
- Low-technology augmentative communication systems are implemented as needed to promote verbal language and emphasize the importance of initiation on the part of the child.
- Sensory integration techniques are used to assist children in establishing and maintaining optimal readiness for learning.
The Achievements Program is part of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at Kennedy Krieger Institute. For more information or to be added to the waiting list for program consideration, please call 443-923-7880. You will be sent a registration form to complete; after it is returned we will call you to set up a screening.
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