The Goals of Specialized Services
Specialized Services provides support to families to learn how to incorporate strategies into their every day routines through regular home visits with members of our Consultant Team. The Consultant Team will help the family to break down their goals to form action plans, while providing the family with supports and resources to facilitate the development of the child’s functional skills. The Specialized Services program aims to enhance the family’s feelings of competence and confidence in addressing challenges at home and in the community.
Children’s Autism Services of Edmonton uses a family-centered approach based on the research-based SCERTS™ model that emphasizes the core challenges and unique learning styles of children with autism:
- (SC) Social Communication: the development and use of functional, spontaneous communication
- (ER) Emotional Regulation: the ability to maintain a well regulated state
- (TS) Transactional Support: the implementation of supports and strategies in response to the child’s needs and interests
The SCERTS model engages and relies on parents who are the primary agents of change and who are able to have the most meaningful and long-term impact.
Our staff works together as a transdisciplinary team, with every member contributing to provide a consistent integrated approach across the disciplines. Team members may include:
Primary Consultant
- Coaches families to support their child in natural routines
- Coordinate home programs and services
- Liaises with external organizations such as Disability Services
- Oversees home goal documents and ensures that goals are being targeted
OT – Occupational Therapists
- Supports feeding, sleep, dressing, toileting, tooth brushing, hand washing, bathing (self-help skills)
- Educates families on sensory processing and regulation, to reduce challenging behaviours
- Addresses fine/gross motor development
SLP – Speech and Language Pathologists
- Supports speech production, language understanding and expression, play, conversation, social skills, peer interaction (social communication)
- Explores communication systems for nonspeaking individuals (pictures, symbols, sign language, speech output devices)
Psychologists and Behaviour Consultants
- Supports family understanding of challenging behaviours, safety, regulation and community outings
- Recommends regulation tools to support a child to stay calm
- Creates a behaviour plan with the family to prevent challenging behaviours
Visits with consultants can occur in the home, in the community and/or at the Maier Centre, a specialized environment designed to enable families to focus on the skill-based learning they require. Specialized Services are available for all children who are eligible through Disability Services, including children with autism or other developmental disorders or delays such as Down syndrome, Fragile X, Global Developmental Delay, Severe Communication and Behaviour Disorder and others.
Behaviour/Developmental Support
Our agency will provide a specific goal oriented service to assist families in learning and developing their skills and strategies that support their child’s development in relation to their assessed needs. We provide clinical expertise around all domains of child functioning. We have staff that are expert clinicians in Autism Spectrum Disorder in the areas of Psychology, Occupational Therapy, Speech Language Pathology and Behaviour consultation. Our staff will provide a high level of expertise in Behaviour Management, Triple P , Mental Health supports, psychoeducational assessments, Hanen Programs (More Than Words, Talkability), AAC, Social Thinking, Bilingual/multimodal language development, feeding, sleep and regulation.