Programs

PECS is a unique alternative/augmentative communication system designed for preschool students diagnosed with autism. PECS is used with learners of all ages who have various cognitive, physical and communication challenges. Specific prompting and reinforcement strategies that are designed to lead to independent communication are used throughout the protocol. The protocol also includes systematic error correction procedures to promote learning if an error occurs. Verbal prompts are not used, thus building immediate initiation and avoiding prompt dependency.

PECS consists of six phases and begins by teaching an individual to give a single picture of a desired item or action to a "communicative partner" who immediately honors the exchange as a request. The system goes on to teach discrimination of pictures and how to put them together in sentences. In the more advanced phases, individuals are taught to use modifiers, answer questions and comment.

The primary goal of PECS is to teach functional communication.

DIRFloortime® is designed to help children with a wide range of emotional, sensory, regulatory, motor, learning, and developmental challenges including having an autism spectrum disorder. DIRFloortime® is an intervention that is used to promote an individual’s development through a respectful, playful, joyful, and engaging process. It is designed to use the power of relationships and human connections to promote the development of the capacities for self-regulation; engagement; communication; shared social problem solving; and creative, organized, and reflective thinking and reasoning. It is used by teachers, occupational therapists, speech therapists, mental health professionals, parents, and many others that care for individuals with developmental challenges or other related needs.

The Circles® Curriculum (Circles®) consists of three Video Modeling® programs that are designed to teach social and relationship boundaries, interpersonal skills, and relationship-specific social skills in an easy-to-understand format.

• Circles®: Intimacy & Relationships®, Level 1
• Circles®: Intimacy & Relationships®, Level 2
• Circles®: Stop Abuse

The Circles® Curriculum is designed to assist students in discriminating different levels of intimacy and adapting their behaviors accordingly. The program teaches students how relationships can be formed and maintained according to the social norms and social boundaries of our day and age. Thus, the Circles® Curriculum is designed to lay the foundation for people with disabilities to manage the amount of personal responsibility and social integration available to them.

Circles® is designed to present to special needs students some extremely abstract concepts in a very simple and concrete manner. The Circles® Curriculum teaches social distance and levels of intimacy through the use of six color-coded concentric circles. Starting from the center circle, which represents the self, each new colored circle represents behaviors, feelings, and actions appropriate to the distance from the center of self. The connection between the kind of relationship and the corresponding level of intimacy is thus demonstrated visually, ideally making it easier for students to understand this important concept.

This program uses step-by-step dramatizations; it is designed to be suitable for students with mild to moderate cognitive impairment.

SCERTS^® is an educational model for working with children with ASD and their families. SCERTS^® is designed to build competence in social communication, emotional regulation, and transactional support and can be used for individuals with a wide range of abilities and ages across home, school, and community settings. It provides specific guidelines designed to help a child become a competent and confident social communicator, while preventing problem behaviors that interfere with learning and the development of relationships. It also is designed to help families, educators, and therapists work cooperatively as a team, in a carefully coordinated manner, to maximize progress in supporting a child.

Project ImPACT (Improving Parents As Communication Teachers) is a parent-mediated intervention for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related social communication delays. Parent-mediated means that a Project ImPACT coach teaches the parent techniques to be used with their child. The Project ImPACT coach uses systematic instruction to increase the parent's responsiveness to the child's behavior and teaches the parent how to use prompting and reinforcement to teach the child to use new communication, imitation, and play skills within child-led interactions. It is a naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention (NDBI). An NDBI is a newer class of intervention that has been informed by the fields of developmental and communication sciences and applied behavior analysis (ABA). Project ImPACT can be implemented in an individual or group coaching model and can be adapted for telehealth.

The We Thinkers! Curriculum Series is one of several components of the larger Social Thinking^® Methodology. It is an integrated social emotional curriculum series developed for children 4-7+ years of age and includes: We Thinkers! Volume 1: Social Explorers curriculum, We Thinkers! Volume 2: Social Problem Solvers curriculum, and We Thinkers! GPS, which includes the Group Collaboration, Play and Problem Solving Scale (GPS), observation and scoring tools, and related differentiated play activities. The entire kit includes 10 social storybooks, two curricula for professional/parents, one interactive assessment, and optional The Incredible Flexible You^® music to support the concepts. This early learner curriculum series was developed to promote, self-awareness, social and emotional competencies, self-regulation, executive functions, and metacognition. The lessons are rooted in the use of a common set of social vocabulary which make abstract social concepts concrete. The curriculum is structured to include the following for each lesson: Opening routine, structured activities, dramatic play to reinforce the concept and vocabulary and a closing routine. There are rubrics for each concept and a fidelity/implementation checklist to ensure consistency.

The Road to Recovery toolkit is designed to teach basic knowledge, skills, and values about working with children with Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities (IDD) who have traumatic experiences and their families. Through multidisciplinary, community-based trainings, The Road to Recovery Toolkit aims to:

• Increase participant awareness of trauma in youth with IDD
• Build community networking in participant agencies
• Encourage coordination of care and access to trauma-informed services
• Teach participants the basics of:
• Child trauma
• Child development
• IDD
• Impact of trauma on development
• Child responses to traumatic experiences

After establishing this foundation, The Road to Recovery Toolkit is designed to build participant skills in providing trauma-informed and IDD-informed services to children and their families. The toolkit includes activities to help professionals establish partnerships across services systems and provides resources to support professionals' self-care for secondary traumatic stress.

The Math Interactive Learning Experience (MILE) program is an intervention designed to facilitate math learning in children who have a history of being diagnosed with a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. The intervention can be used in one on one habilitative care environments and in small group school environments. The program teaches math concepts using manipulatives to support problems with working memory skills and visual-spatial reasoning. In addition, a metacognitive learning technique called FAR (Focus and Plan, Act, and Reflect) is used to teach the child to self-regulate and monitor their thinking processes during the learning. There are optional components of the program that teach caregivers about the impact of prenatal alcohol exposure, how to advocate for their children, and how to support their child's math learning. In addition, instruction in behavioral regulation training is given to parents to support their child's readiness to learn.

Multidimensional Family Recovery (MDFR) is a home- and community-based family intervention that addresses parental substance misuse and child maltreatment. MDFR is designed to help parents involved in the child welfare system achieve and sustain sobriety, provide a safe and healthy family environment for their children, comply with child welfare or court requirements, and prevent further child welfare involvement. MDFR provides certain direct interventions and also facilitates engagement in substance use treatment and other needed service for parents and children. MDFR promotes change in six domains: self of the parent, parenting/co-parenting, children & child safety, family relationships, intimate relationships, and basic needs and resources. Within these domains the MDFR counselors meet (a) alone with the parents, (b) alone with spouses/partners of the parent(s), grandparents, and other family members; and (c) in conjoint sessions with the parent and spouse/partner, co-parent, grandparents, children, and other family members as needed.

Good Behavior Game®/PAX Good Behavior Game® (PAX GBG) are one and the same. Scientifically, it is the Good Behavior Game®, and commercially and in educational settings it is preferred by Johns Hopkins University staff and users to use the softer, “relational frame” name for use with children, families, and staffs as the PAX Good Behavior Game or “PAX,” which means Peace, Productivity, Health, and Happiness.

The PAX Good Behavior Game (PAX GBG) is a universal classroom-based preventive intervention that is designed to create a nurturing environment for all children. The intervention aims to increase on-task behavior, focused attention, and self-regulation in students while decreasing disruptive, withdrawn, and violent behavior. Unlike a curriculum, the intervention is designed to integrate seamlessly into classroom instruction by providing the teacher or after-school professional with ten research-based behavioral health strategies for use in concert with daily instruction.

SNAP^® (Stop Now And Plan) Boys is a cognitive-behavioral multicomponent model for at-risk children with disruptive behavior problems, and their families. SNAP Boys focuses on teaching effective emotional regulation, self-control, and problem-solving skills, with an emphasis on challenging cognitive distortions and aimed at helping children make better choices in the moment in order to keep them involved in school and avoid criminal conduct. SNAP Boys uses strategies such as role-playing, cognitive restructuring, and reinforcement learning. Concurrently, caregivers are also taught the SNAP Boys strategy to help them cope with their own emotions and self-regulation, in addition to, effective parent management strategies. In addition to the group sessions, SNAP Boys provides services to meet the needs of individual families. These may include family counselling, academic tutoring, school advocacy, and mentoring. As part of a continued care model, SNAP Youth Leadership Services are offered to youth aged 11.5-14 who require additional skill development, employment skills, and help to prevent gang affiliation.

Early Risers: Skills for Success is a multicomponent, developmentally focused, competency-enhancement program that targets elementary school students (6-12 years old) who are at high risk for early development of conduct problems, including substance use. This program is based on the premise that early, comprehensive and sustained intervention is necessary to target multiple risk and protective factors. It uses integrated child-, school-, and family-focused interventions to move high-risk children onto a more adaptive developmental pathway.