Our Services

Home and Community-Based ABA

We realize we are coming into your home and understand this can be stressful. Above all, we know that you are willing to change your family dynamic to obtain help for your child, and we respect and admire this about you! Before we begin, please know that we truly want to partner with you to assist your child and family in positive development.

Because effective ABA intervention is not a “one way fits all” approach, our skilled ABA therapists customize each session to the current skill level of your child. This means tuning into their skills, needs, interests, preferences, environment, motivation, and family situation.

We have extensive experience using systems such as:

• Social Stories
• Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
• Discrete Trial Training (DTT)
• Structured Methods in Language Communication (SMILE)
• Errorless Learning
• Social Thinking
• Video Modeling (Model Me Kids)
• Verbal Behavior
• Natural Environment Training (NET)
• Incidental Teaching
• Pivotal Response Training

Community participation is a unique part of our social skills training and all our programming fosters naturally motivated learning opportunities to enhance generalization of skills across settings and environments.

Weekly Community-Based Social Opportunities

JumpStart Social Opportunities are one-of-a-kind and are all community based!

Our unique social opportunities are designed for elementary and middle-school age children who have developing verbal skills. These small group outings assist in developing independent, meaningful, and age appropriate social skills.

JumpStart’s primary group focusses on beginning level social skills such as sharing, turn-taking, prolonged eye contact, and joining in during peer play. We create opportunities to work on making friends, what is socially acceptable, and how to stand up for yourself. We work intensely on conversation initiation, staying on topic, and conversation reciprocity. Opportunities are created for imaginary play, engaging in expected play behavior with peers, and understanding ones-own feelings and the feelings of others. One of the best things about these outings is that we offer both opportunities to practice (contrived learning sessions) and supported community based sessions where children put their skills to use in natural settings to build confidence and foster generalization.

Intermediate level group focuses on conversational turn taking and prolonged ability to talk about non-preferred topics. Kids learn about expected social behaviors including how to read and exhibit correct body language, facial expressions, and appropriate ways to engage with a peer. We create an atmosphere to comfortably discuss and work on self acceptance, personal differences, how to ‘fit in’ while embracing being unique, changing bodies, bullying, self advocacy, and relationships with friends and family. Weekly outings offer frequent opportunities to practice learned skills in age appropriate, natural settings such as at restaurants, movies, bowling, parks, and sporting venues to gain self-confidence and real life application.

IEP Consultation and Advocacy Support

Parents often report to us a gap between home and school services and as a result, JumpStart is comprised of many loving and passionate staff with extensive background in the education system. We feel this gap is lessened with knowledge and experience and we know that we make a difference because of this. We have years of experience working in various areas of Special Education and with an immensely varying range of developmental disabilities. We have written IEP’s, collected data, worked directly in classrooms as teachers and paraprofessionals, conducted parent/teacher conferences, lead IEP meetings, and we know the reality of what is (and is not) possible within this system.

It is important to us that we provide knowledgeable and professional consultation to current clients regarding preparation for IEP meetings, review of IEP goals, representation as your child’s advocate in meetings, and on-going collaboration between school staff and our staff. What is most important to us is that every professional working with a JumpStart client positively collaborates for the benefit of the child. The saying is that ‘it takes a village’ and we want to be a part of building a positive and productive village of professionals who all have one common goal: the success of your child!