Teaching & Workshops
The more one knows the more one can succeed!
The purpose for offering workshops is to: share knowledge and expertise, gain new skills, continue education, create awareness & advocacy, build confidence and self-esteem as a professional, enhance problem solving abilities, and facilitate behavior change. Added benefits are often better collaboration and team work among site staff.
New developments in the medical field, approaches to child rearing, and technology are constant yet not everyone knows everything. We offer offer dynamic and interactive learning experiences that have a lasting impact on participants and contribute to positive individual and societal outcomes.
Imagine your staff being confident in supporting children with different communication and learning needs!
Program Development
Program development is the systematic process of creating, designing, and implementing a structured set initiatives to achieve specific goals or objectives. It involves planning, organizing, and coordinating resources and efforts to address a particular need or problem effectively.
This interactive process requires collaboration among stakeholders (including program planners, implementers, beneficiaries, and funders) as well as flexibility, creativity, and responsiveness to changing needs and circumstances.
It utilizes the principles of Universal Design for Learning to be more inclusive of all learners and raises the confidence of your staff and parents.
Alternate Communication
Communication is the foundation for all human interaction.
Children that communicate differently are often not able to get their wants/needs met, instead demonstrating limiting behavior and interactions.
Augmentative and Alternate Communication (AAC), is technology that supports a child’s communication and/or communication development. It is specifically tailored to the unique needs of a child and her/his environment, improving social interactions, promoting inclusion, independence, and a better quality of life.
An assessment includes a comprehensive evaluation of language development stages, access points, with the goal of increased engagement at every level. Inclusion and training of people regularly interaction with the child are critical components for successful AAC.
Technology for Different Needs
Technology is part of our daily life, and hailed as a great learning tool. Yet often the readily-available items are not a good fit and meaningless for children that learn differently.
Assistive technology (AT) refers to any device, equipment, software, or system that is specifically designed or adapted to help people with disabilities overcome functional limitations and perform tasks they might have difficulty accomplishing otherwise. The primary goal of assistive technology is to enhance the individual’s independence, participation, and overall quality of life.
The expertise to identify what technology is accessible (or how to make it accessible) and finding activities that are meaningful to a child’s developmental level can be provided through assessment and consultation services.
Sensory Integration
Sensory integration, also known as sensory processing, refers to the way our nervous system receives, interprets, and organizes sensory information from the environment and our own bodies. It plays a crucial role in how we perceive and respond to the world around us and regulate our alertness state.
Each Person has a unique sensory profile.
For most people, this occurs automatically and efficiently, allowing them to respond appropriately to the world around them. However, some individuals experience over-awareness/responsiveness and/or under-awareness/responsiveness to certain sensory input, which often leads to non-productive outcomes and difficulty engaging with the world around us.
Understanding how to support sensory needs is invaluable support in raising a child.
Feeding & Swallowing
Eating is inherently a social and nurturing experience.
It goes beyond just the act of consuming food; it involves sharing meals, bonding with family and friends, and experiencing cultural traditions.
Swallowing involves the coordination of over 20 muscles, and any issues with this process can lead to serious consequences if not properly addressed. Children who have difficulty eating a varied diet due to medical, structural, sensory, or behavioral conditions experience challenges that go beyond just their nutritional intake, affecting overall well-being, physical health, and emotional development.
In such cases, professional guidance becomes essential to assess and manage eating challenges through personalized interventions and strategies to support the child in developing safe and effective eating habits.
Appropriate support will address not just the child’s eating but also family dynamics and social interactions.
Early Intervention
Early intervention refers to a range of services, support, and therapies provided to children who are at risk of or have been identified as having developmental delays, as well as to their families.
Early intervention programs provide tailored and individualized assistance during a critical period for brain development and learning to promote optimal growth and development.
Physiologic Systems are developing, reflexes are integrating, and there are many areas of development that overlap and progress in alternate phases.
Interventions at this age have the most impact.
Foundational Skills
Foundational skills, also known as fundamental skills, are essential abilities and knowledge that form the building blocks for more complex learning and development in all areas of life. These skills are typically learned early in life and include not just physical growth but also the following: gross motor, fine motor, cognition, social-emotional skills, sensory processing.
These foundational skills are typically developed during early childhood through play, exploration, and interactions with the environment and caregivers.
Missing isolated skills can affect a child’s overall development, learning, interactions, and joy in their accomplishments. Even small quality of movement challenges can impact a child’s engagement greatly.
Visual-Motor Skills
Visual-motor skills, also known as eye-hand coordination or visuomotor integration, refer to the ability to coordinate visual information processing with precise motor movements. These skills are among the first to develop and keep expanding for more complex tasks.
With an evaluation we assess the multitude of sub-skills that affect development by analyzing how the brain uses information provided through the eyes to read, write, understand spatial relations, and gauge movement.
Difficulties with visual-motor skills can impact a child’s performance in school, their ability to participate in physical activities, and their overall independence in daily life.
These skills cannot be measured when your child’s eyes are checked for acuity (glasses).