Programs

Creating Change is a past-focused model for trauma and addiction for a very broad range of clients. It can be conducted in individual or group format by any provider. The program is designed to be highly accessible, flexible, and engaging from a public health standpoint. Each treatment topic helps clients face their past by addressing a theme, for example:

• Honor Your Survival
• Break the Silence
• Emotions and Healing
• Relationship Patterns
• Influences: Family, Community, Culture
• Power Dynamics
• Why Addiction?
• Darkness and Light
• Listen to Your Body
• What You Want People to Understand
• Deepen Your Story

Creating Change has the same format and compassionate tone as Seeking Safety (a present-focused model for trauma and/or addiction) and can be used with that model if desired.

The Youth Acceptance Project (YAP) serves the families of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning (LGBTQ) and gender expansive children/youth in foster care. The intervention serves as a family preservation or reunification tool, assisting families who are struggling with the sexual orientation, gender identity/expression of their child. This intervention’s aim is to move families to a place of acceptance by using a trauma-informed, psychoeducational model to address the misinformation and emotions with which families often struggle. The intervention is designed to reduce the time that children spend in foster care and reunite children with their families. YAP is a program of Family Builders, a nonprofit foster family and adoption agency, which provides direct services to counties in the Bay Area. The agency also provides a training and consultation model to jurisdictions outside the Bay Area to implement this program in their community. The services are designed to prepare clinicians to deliver culturally informed, SOGIE (sexual orientation gender identity/expression) competent support services and includes an intensive multiday training as well as ongoing consultation.

Friends of the Children (FOTC) provides children and families with intensive, individualized service from full-time, highly trained, salaried mentors (called Friends) for 12+ years, from kindergarten through high school graduation. In partnership with child welfare systems, community partners and schools, FOTC pro-actively selects children ages 4–6 facing the most significant barriers to future success. FOTC intentionally and simultaneously works with youth and caregivers in their lives together. Each Friend works one-on-one with 8–10 youth for 3–4 hours per week in school, at home, and in community. Friends provide a consistent caring relationship to: (1) engage youth and model strength-based social emotional development for caregivers; (2) foster healthy attachments and intrinsic motivation for goal achievement; (3) strengthen access to concrete supports and social networks; and (4) promote self-advocacy in school and other systems. FOTC stays with youth and their caregivers for 12+ years, supporting positive development and helping navigate life’s challenges.

CIFFTA is a 12–24-week outpatient treatment for adolescents 11 to 18 years old and their family/caregivers. CIFFTA incorporates content relevant to diverse adolescents (e.g., race, ethnicity, LGBTQ) and is designed to engage marginalized communities, reduce symptoms of behavioral and mental disorders and substance use, and to improve family functioning (e.g., increase parental involvement and cohesion and reduce conflict). CIFFTA uses an adaptive and flexible modular design to tailor treatment to unique clinical and cultural characteristics. CIFFTA includes individual adolescent treatment, family treatment, and psychoeducational components. Its Social Ecological and Human Development foundation means it focuses on 1) sharing information, building skills, and increasing motivation at the individual child level; 2) creating more adaptive and healthy interactions in the family; 3) empowering parents to work more effectively with school, health, welfare and juvenile justice systems; and 4) buffering destructive societal messages and forces. Materials are available in Spanish and English.

CAST focuses on developing students' understanding of the factors that lead to child maltreatment and the existing responses to incidents of child abuse and neglect, so they work more effectively within multiple systems and institutions that respond to these situations. Students learn about the various professional responses to child maltreatment and develop a multidisciplinary understanding of the most effective responses. Learners completing the courses in this program will be better equipped to carry out the work of different agencies and systems (e.g., healthcare, criminal justice, social services) as they advocate on behalf of the needs of children as victims and survivors of child abuse.

Childhelp® Speak Up Be Safe is a school-based curriculum that helps children in grades Pre-K to 12 learn skills to prevent or interrupt cycles of neglect, bullying, and child abuse—physical, emotional, and sexual—through developmentally appropriate lessons. The program uses an ecological approach, providing materials to engage parents and caregivers, teachers, school administrators, and community stakeholders. It increases children's ability to recognize unsafe situations or abusive behaviors and helps them build resistance skills and a responsive safety network with peers and safe adults. Program facilitators receive training and tools to deliver the lessons with fidelity.

LEAP Preschool (also known as Learning Experiences: An Alternative Program for Preschoolers and Parents [LEAP]) is designed to be both a behaviorally and developmentally appropriate approach for teaching children with and without disabilities within an inclusive early childhood environment. Learning activities are selected based upon the needs, interests, and developmental levels of individual children within the classroom. An integrated curriculum approach (i.e., designing learning experiences that promote children's skill development across multiple domains) is used to provide learning opportunities across all areas of development (e.g., social/emotional, language, adaptive behavior, cognitive, and physical). Curricular activities are selected to encourage children's learning through active exploration with concrete materials and interactions with other children and adults. Individual children's progress towards identified goals and objectives are monitored on an ongoing, systematic basis. In addition, assessment of skill acquisition, maintenance, and generalization are conducted as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of instructional strategies.

The Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is a relationship-based intervention designed to help children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that involves the parents and families. An Early Start for your Child with Autism, is a parent’s guide to using everyday activities to help kids connect, communicate, and learn. The aim of ESDM is to increase the rates of development in all domains for children with ASD as it simultaneously aims to decrease the symptoms of autism.

ESDM focuses on boosting children’s social-emotional, cognitive, and language abilities, as development in these domains is particularly affected by autism. ESDM fuses a behavioral, relationship-based approach with a more developmental, play-based one in order to create an integrated whole that is both individualized and standardized.

Relationship Development Intervention (RDI®) is for individuals and families that face autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and other developmental difficulties. It is designed to activate the grow-seeking drive inside those with an ASD.

RDI® programs are designed to teach parents how to guide their child to seek out and succeed in truly reciprocal relationships, while addressing key core issues such as motivation, communication, emotional regulation, episodic memory, rapid attention-shifting, self-awareness, appraisal, executive functioning, flexible thinking, and creative problem solving.

RDI® includes an intensive parent training component designed for both parent' involvement from the beginning and real-life coaching that takes place in the home setting with the whole family. The goal is to guide family members to develop new ways of thinking, perceiving, and acting to know how to best facilitate the mental growth of the child with an ASD. The program embraces the premise that every family member is critical to success. A trained RDI® Consultant works with each family to develop an individualized set of objectives that may include simplifying the home environment, slowing down the pace of life, and balancing the entire family's schedule and life outside of a special needs' diagnosis. The RDI® program believes that making lasting, meaningful, and lifelong changes begins at home with the child's parents first, and that the remediation process should take place amidst each family's unique culture and relationships.

Pivotal Response Treatment® (PRT®) is a naturalistic intervention model derived from Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) for children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). PRT® is designed to target pivotal areas of a child's development, such as motivation, responsivity to multiple cues, self-management, and social initiations. These skills are pivotal because they are the foundational behaviors upon which learners with ASD can make widespread and generalized improvements in many other areas. By targeting these critical behaviors, PRT® aims to result in widespread, collateral improvements in communication, social, and behavioral domains. Specific motivational procedures including child choice, task variation, interspersing maintenance and acquisition tasks, rewarding attempts, and the use of direct natural reinforcers, are incorporated. The goal of PRT® is to move the child with ASD towards a more typical developmental trajectory, through individualized intervention objectives based on the child's needs. PRT® targets each core area of development and focuses on increasing motivation to engage and learn for children with ASD. PRT® is implemented in the natural environments of the child (e.g., home, community, and school) and emphasizes parent education in an effort to empower family members to become agents of intervention, so that learning can ideally be embedded across daily routines.

The Lovaas Model of Applied Behavior Analysis is a behavioral treatment model typically starts with children between the ages of two and eight who have developmental delays. Children typically transition to different services as they progress through elementary school and no later than the age of twelve. While treatment is always based on the principles of applied behavior analysis, its implementation varies based on a child's unique needs.

The Lovaas Model was created as a comprehensive, integrated program in which skills complement and build upon each other. The intervention progresses systematically through stages of learning and emphasizes individualization of curriculum based on each child's strengths and weaknesses.

Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) for Adolescents is a 14-week social skills intervention designed for motivated teens in middle school or high school who are interested in learning ways to help them make and keep friends. During each group session, teens are taught important social skills and are given the opportunity to practice these skills in session during real play activities (e.g., playing sports, board games, etc.).

Parents are taught how to assist their teens in making and keeping friends by providing feedback through coaching during weekly socialization homework assignments.