AUTISM

CORNERSTONE'S AUTISM CARE

At Cornerstone Therapies we are committed to providing autistic individuals services that are both socially significant for our families and beneficial to the child’s overall growth and progress. Our focus is to balance habilitation with our client's rights to happiness and independence. Our services utilize evidence-based practices to provide exceptional and compassionate care to our clients. We operate with the understanding that:

• Autistic individuals have the ability to be successful learners when provided the right tools and support

• Neurodiversity is important and it is necessary to build trust and acceptance at an early age.

• Lack of progress generally signals problems with the design and implementation of the educational activity rather than the inability of the child to learn.

• Each child and family is unique. Therefore, goals, interventions, and approaches must be individualized.

• Autistic individuals have minds, opinions, preferences, choices, and feelings. They have a right to self-expression and the ability to make independent choices. Programs should enable children to become advocates for themselves and provide ways to functionally communicate their feelings, wants and needs.

• Autism is complex disorder affecting virtually all areas of functioning; interdisciplinary professional guidance is needed to address the wide range of challenges that autism presents.

• Autistic individuals are capable of becoming intentional, effective, symbolic communicators when provided tools of communication.

• Families are an integral part of their child’s treatment and family members need to have a role in their child’s program and progress

• Autistic individuals have the right to being an active part of the community and therapy should focus on social relationships and functioning in both the home and community

• Systematic instruction can be a powerful tool for early intervention. It involves concrete, well-written objectives that are accomplished through pre-planned instructional activities. Progress is measured through ongoing data collection on each targeted objective.

• Several intervention approaches for autistic children have demonstrated their effectiveness in certain instructional methodologies. A comprehensive, contemporary treatment approach must be able to draw from all the expertise available in the field.

• Intervention delivered in various settings and by various people enable generalization and increase the likelihood skills will maintain overtime.

• Intensity (i.e., number of hours of intervention by trained staff) must be individualized. There is no one best formula for all children.

• More hours are not always therapeutic. We believe in creating a healthy balance for our clients so that they can engage in extracurricular social opportunities as well as have opportunities for learning. 

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Ingredients for successful intervention include:

1. Positive social and physical therapeutic environment. 

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2. High number of choices to allow for shared control over sessions. 

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3. High number of opportunities for learning and engagement

4. Intervention provided by staff and family members skillful at delivering evidence-based interventions

3. Careful delivery of target objectives while 

4. Use of progress data and ongoing assessment to adjust interventions in order to maximize rate of gain.