Services

One-to-One behaviour intervention sessions are the perfect opportunity to work on goals that are meaningful to your child and your family! These fun and interactive one to one sessions are individualized and can take place in your home, preschool, daycare or other community setting. This is our most comprehensive model offered where we have a combination of one to one sessions, parent support and collaboration with other service providers.

Assessment

Before developing intervention goals we want to make sure that we get to know your child! The initial assessment process may include a parent interview, setting up play sessions where we engage with your child and determine their strengths and needs, observing your child at their school/daycare/community, and gathering information from other professionals involved. Most importantly we want to hear from you and your child!

Some assessment tools we may use include: VB-MAPP, ESDM, EBIC, AFLS, Essentials for Living as well as a variety of social skills and vocational skills measures. Another key measure is student directed interviews–we want to hear from your child–what is important to them and what would they like to learn.

Developing a plan

Once we get to know your family and your family’s priorities, we begin to develop the plan of intervention (BPI). The plan will include building new skills across a number of domains, such as self-advocacy, communication skills, social skills, independence skills, etc. Our goal is to work collaboratively with you on your family’s quality of life. Your input is critical!

Setting up the team

At the same time as we are getting to know your child and developing the plan, we are helping you to recruit behaviour interventionists. We are happy to provide as little or as much support as needed to this process! We have a wide circle of BIs that we work with and we can also assist with posting ads and doing screening interviews. What’s important to us is that you have a say in who works with your child and the final decision is always up to you! Once BIs have been hired we provide initial training and ongoing support.

Intervention sessions can occur at your home, your child’s daycare/school, or in the community.

Intervention and team support

The intervention process begins with the Behaviour Interventionist building a relationship with your child. We all learn best when we are having fun so this is an important first step! We want your child to want to participate in sessions and to look forward to them!

Once that is established, the Behaviour Interventionists will gradually begin to incorporate the goals, learning activities and strategies outlined in your child’s plan into their play sessions. You will find that sessions are going to be fun with much of your child’s interests incorporated! Don’t be surprised if you find us making forts under your kitchen table.

We will be visiting regularly–making sure that things are going as planned, making modifications as needed, and updating to new goals as your child progresses. We join in on the Behaviour Interventionists’ sessions to provide ongoing training and recommendations, and have monthly team meetings to collaborate and discuss your child’s growth. The frequency of visits and meetings will be determined based on the individual needs of the child and the team.

We want to empower you with tools so that you feel successful and ready to tackle each stage of your child’s development. We have a flexible parent coaching model to fit with your families schedules and routines!

Assessment

We want to start with hearing from you! What makes your family and child tick? What are some values that are important to you and your family? What are priorities that we can help with that would directly impact your family’s quality of life? After getting to know you and what some of your priorities are, we will then determine next steps for further observations and assessments if needed.

Developing a plan

The information gathered from the assessment process will be used to develop a plan for next steps. This may be a comprehensive positive behaviour support plan or coaching workshops to guide you through specific strategies for success.

Parent support

Support will vary based on your family’s needs but you can depend on seeing us regularly. We will set up regular parent coaching sessions, where we model strategies and provide recommendations. We will also check in with you via phone, email or video conferencing for ongoing support.

We heard you! A consistent thread during our discussions with parents was the lack of social opportunities for their children. So we created these social skills groups to provide opportunities for your child to engage in interactions with similar-aged peers sharing common interests. The intent of the group is really to foster friendships while working on specific social goals and working on building self-esteem and self-confidence.

Some of the social skills targeted in this group include:

• conversation skills (initiating and sustaining conversations, staying on topic)

• non-verbal communication

• self-awareness

• emotional regulation

• perspective taking

• problem solving

• sportsmanship

• executive functioning

To ensure that all the participants in the group are a good fit, we begin with a brief meeting with you and your child to get to know your child’s interests and needs. Prior to the start of each set of sessions, the group facilitator will meet with your child to guide them in determining their own goals for the group.

We offer both virtual as well as in-person options. Each group typically has 3-5 children and two facilitators. Groups are offered multiple times per year.

The Positive Behaviour Support approach addresses your child’s and your family’s strengths, values, needs and preferences, and focuses on improving the quality of life of those involved. It involves carefully understanding why your child’s behaviours are occurring. It focusses on establishing proactive strategies to set your child up for success and teaching your child functional skills to replace challenging behaviours.

The Positive Behaviour Support process consists of several steps:

• Learning about your child's strengths, values, needs, and preferences.

• Understanding your child’s environments. This helps us to ensure that our plan will have good contextual fit.

• Information gathering from child and significant others (e.g. teachers, coaches, etc.).

• Direct observation of difficult routines in which distressing behaviour may occur.

• Identifying the underlying reasons for the distressing behaviour

• Development of positive behaviour support plan consisting of intervention strategies.

• Implementation support.

• Ongoing maintenance and support.

Navigating the education system can be a daunting and overwhelming experience for families. The ultimate goal is for your child to be recognized and supported as a valued member of your school and your community, and we are available to assist with this in a variety of capacities.

This service delivery model focuses on supporting the child within the school environment. It can be tailored to your family and your school in a number of ways, including:

• collaborating with educators and support staff

• participating in Individual Education Plan (IEP) meetings and setting appropriate IEP goals

• providing training and workshops for educators and support staff

• conducting individual functional assessments and developing Positive Behaviour Support plans

• developing School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support plans

• setting up social groups within the school setting

• facilitating home-school collaboration

• facilitating the transition from preschool/daycare to kindergarten

We are excited to offer workshops of a variety of topics to community agencies, families, professionals, etc. Please reach out for more information using the form below.

We recognize that all families have varying needs as well as different comfort levels with having people in their home. We also realize that travel can be a barrier for some families. We are happy to offer all of the above services via telehealth or through a combination of virtual and in-person services.