ACES- Treatment and Learning Center

I'm Natasha Lubchenco with today's CT Style Express. If your child is living with autism or other behavioral disorders, Area Cooperative Educational Services, also known as ACES, wants to help them thrive. The agency just opened a treatment and learning center to help children around the state. Here to tell us more about it is Carrie Hartman. She is the coordinator of behavior services and autism programs at ACES. Hi Carrie, thanks for joining us. Hi Natasha, thank you for having me today. Of course. Yes, we're very excited about our new treatment and learning center, also known as ACES TLC. ACES has been providing home outreach services to children with autism for almost 20 years and now we're excited to have a on-site location to provide these same type of services. The center is in Hampton and we have a number of environments for all ages. We have a traditional preschool environment for younger kids and areas for kids all the way through high school. And that is wonderful and tell me about, you know, I know there are programs this summer and programs throughout the year, so can you kind of detail those for us and what people can expect? Sure, right now we have a summer program going for preschool-aged kids called Play Through ABA where we are working on goals and objectives and using the science of behavior analysis to teach these skills. We are hoping to have a number of enrichment programs after school for kids of all ages. So sometimes kids with developmental disabilities or autism or social-emotional disabilities have a hard time participating in the traditional after-school activities. So our team of behavior analysts in collaboration with some of ACES special education teachers, speech and language pathologists, are going to offer a variety of after-school activities and groups for these students. In addition, we will be providing assessment and treatment to students with autism. This treatment is funded often through students' insurance. A lot of times parents are not aware that insurance covers ABA services for kids with autism and early intervention is key so the earlier families become aware of this, the sooner they can get their children set up for treatment and we are here to do that at TLC. We also provide it in homes as well. And why is a resource like this so important for families and children who are living and dealing with these disorders? Well, like I said, with autism in particular, early intervention is key and ABA Applied Behavior Analysis is one of the only empirically validated treatment of autism. So it's very important for parents to become aware of the resources that are out there and find services for their kids early on. Typically when we get the younger guys, we work on things like CUSP skills, which are skills that will help them learn more naturally in the future. So things like imitation, matching, and then with older kids, you know, at that point we typically are working on more adaptive living skills to help them be more independent in their lives. Wonderful, and what do you hope that the children who come to your center leave with? What skills do you hope they take away? What experience do you hope that they have? Well, first and foremost, we hope that when they're here they're having fun. We are trying to set it up in a way that is, you know, rewarding for them and fun for them to be here. But really, we just want them to leave with the skills that are important for them to live, you know, independent lives. The skills that are important to their families for them to obtain. We work on language and communication and those sorts of things, which is very, very rewarding to have a child come in without words and leave being able to communicate, you know, to their, with their families. Absolutely, it must be amazing for you to see and for the parents really to see as well. That's really a tremendous growth. So, Kari, thank you so much. And where can our viewers go to learn more if this is something they think might benefit their child? They could come right to our website aces.org. They can look for behavior services and the link to TLC and shoot me an email and we'll get in touch. Wonderful, Kari. Thank you so much again for joining us. Again, that website is aces.org for more information. For Safety Style, I'm Natasha Lubchenco and we will see you back here tomorrow.