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New Option for Parents: Social Hub for Local Kids with Autism Opens

Published on Monday, March 6, 2017 | 5:41 am
 

The Arcadia-based Assessment, Consultation and Treatment center that serves children with autism and other developmental delays with fun classes like art, yoga and homework help celebrated the grand opening of it’s brand new center here in Pasadena last Friday.

The sprawling new location situated on the south west corner of San Gabriel and Foothill Blvd. represents the next chapter in the center’s mission to better serve the autistic community by becoming a hub for social interaction for kids and their families in an otherwise isolated program that consists of mainly house calls.

“We’re always trying to get kids to start integrating more into the community. One of the biggest problems that families have is trying to find places for their kids to go so a lot of times parents are faced with finding an art program where their child will ‘fit in’. This new center gives more families the chance interact and have a central meeting place to do just that,” explained Dr. Paula Santos from the Assessment, Consultation and Treatment Center.

Assessment, Consultation & Treatment provides psychological, behavioral, and assessment services to children, adolescents, adults and families based in Applied Behavior in Applied Behavior Analysis, known as ABA.

They specialize in treatment for those with Autism Spectrum Disorders, other developmental delays, ADHD, anxiety, and problem behaviors typically from birth to young adulthood.

According to Santos, the biggest deficit children with autism are faced with involve developing social skills.

“We’re trying to create a social recreation space for them to start here, at least, integrating a little bit and spending time together before we integrate them even more into the community,” said Santos.
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) seeks to identify why we do the things we do—or why we engage in certain behaviors, and how to then change or modify behavior by looking at the environment, according to the center’s website.

ABA has been demonstrated consistently to be the treatment of choice, according to the center’s website, and is the only one approved by the Center for Disease Control to be effective in treating autism spectrum disorders.

“The majority of our services have primarily been outside of the clinic,” explained Santos.

Historically, Regional Centers which are operated by private nonprofit corporations which contract with the State Department of Developmental Services to coordinate services for people with developmental disabilities, have required ABA services to be conducted at home.

Regional Centers vendor different agencies to provide different types of services in which the Assessment, Consultation and Treatment center is the selected vendor through the Applied Behavior Services category through the local San Gabriel/Pomona Regional Center

Since the passing of the most recent ABA bill in 2013, the State of California now requires insurance companies to fund autism services, according to Santos, making her clinic accessible to more families than ever before.

“With that, there’s a lot more freedom of choice of where those services happen or how you can utilize them,” said Santos. “We do serve people in the community primarily in their homes or in their school programs and so now that insurance allows more mixed model based services,” said Santos.

The clinic features a staff of 70 dedicated clinicians.

“We try to hire people who are dedicated to the field that work in higher education and are career minded,” explained Santos.

An added benefit of the the new location is that is its newfound accommodation for training.

“Now we have a facility that allows us to train up to fifty people at a time. It’s an added benefit overall for the organization,” explained Santos.

For more information, visit http://www.actpsychology.com/

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