What a wonderful last few weeks we have had at Spectrum Autism Services! We are so grateful for the Stafford community for welcoming us with open arms and for supporting the opening of our clinic!
In addition to providing one on one ABA therapy, our clinic, located at 35 Walpole St #204 in Stafford, Virginia, also offers both Full Day and Half Day Programs for children ages 2-5.
Our Board Certified Behavior Analysts, Registered Behavior Therapists, and certified teachers will develop individualized programs for your little one with ASD.
We are excited to announce the opening of our new office space and Spectrum Academy! We will have an open house on Wednesday, August 7th from 10am-6 pm. We would love for you to stop by, see Spectrum’s new home, and share some sweet treats!
This month we are spotlighting a wonderful team member at Spectrum Autism Services!
Emily Taylor has always had a passion for working with children and helping them reach their potential. In 2016, she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from James Madison University. She then began her career in the field of Autism in the school setting by providing both classroom-based and one-on-one services at a Special Education, Applied Behavior Analysis based school in Maryland.
In 2018, she moved to Fredericksburg where she became a part of the Spectrum family as a Registered Behavior Technician.
It wasn’t until joining Spectrum that Emily truly realized her calling for working in the field of ABA. She is currently enrolled at The University of Southern Maine in pursuit of a Master’s in Educational Psychology and Applied Behavior Analysis.
Emily is extremely excited to continue her education and to inspire others to find passion in working in the field of Autism! We are so lucky to have her on our staff.
This week we want to celebrate the amazing impact teachers (including paraprofessionals, school speech pathologists, and school occupational therapists) can make on our kiddos lives, especially those who work with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Children with Autism have varying characteristics that, as parents and therapists, can transform us, challenge us, and teach us. We understand the often unrealized desire to put our own needs on the back-burner to dive head first in caring for those with atypical needs. We hope that as you do one of the most important professions, teaching and preparing our youth for social settings and their futures, that you read our thank you list to re-boost your end of the year energy. And hopefully, you will understand a little bit more the incalculable gratitude we have for you that is oh-so-difficult to show on an everyday basis.
One of many fun sensory activities used by educators and therapists!
We want to thank the teachers who come in early, leave late, and often have to spend their own money to have adequate supplies, therapeutic/sensory materials, and even allergy friendly foods for their students.
We want to thank the teachers in our kiddos lives who take the extra five minutes at the end of an exhausting workday to give our children that extra interaction.
We want to thank the teachers who redirect our children with ASD in the classroom with loving grace instead of frustration.
We want to thank the teachers who look at our children with ASD and feel an outpouring of empathy that is visible and palpable in your daily interactions with them.
We want to thank the teachers that find something in common with our children with ASD and capitalize on it by generating discussions, activities, or feelings of belonging to those that don’t always fit in.
We want to thank the teachers who create lessons plans with our differentiated learners in mind, and do so with excitement to help them learn in a way not typical to the traditional classroom.
We want to thank the teachers who make it a vital importance to implement IEP accommodations, and do so out of a heartfelt desire to make an often uncomfortable child that much more comfortable in a social setting.
We want to thank the teachers that take our children with ASD out of a stressful situation and into a hallway or place of safety while a meltdown occurs, so that our child will not be taunted by peers for an uncontrollable event.
We want to thank the teachers who treat the parents of children with ASD with amicable fellowship, and are not irritated by our sometimes fretful emails, but instead take the time to reassure us of situations.
We want to thank the teachers of those with ASD for making an impact on our child’s lives in a way we sometimes cannot. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child, and the truth in that is some days you have as much affect on the lives of our children as we do.
We want to thank the teachers who remove our children from harmful situations, both social and towards themselves, with the care of a loving guardian.
We want to thank the teachers who show up, day in day out, tired or well rested, stressed or relaxed, happy or emotional, and STILL find a way to have an uplifting, impactful, and compassionate school day. Your effort will never go unnoticed, even if our thanks some days goes unsaid.
From the bottom of our hearts and the depths of our souls, we thank you.
Handle with Care provides teaching strategies for those working with the behaviorally challenged population. The goal of Handle with Care is to ensure a safe and nurturing environment.
By teaching and implementing preventative actions that decrease the need for physical restraints, Handle with Care equips parents, ABA professionals, school teachers and many other professionals proper restraining techniques for the event that a restraint is absolutely necessary for the safety of a client or student.
Handle with Care believes that if staff work in fear and do not feel personally safe, then there can be no emotional safety whatsoever as fear will be the controlling emotion.
Similarly, if the client cannot trust the staff to keep them unharmed and treat them fairly, they will not trust the staff or therapists to teach and provide the therapy they need.
Handle With Care is committed to the emotional and physical safety of behaviorally challenged individuals whose behavior may become harmful to themselves or others and the staff and organizations that support them.
In this video, Faith demonstrates how to responsibly remove yourself from an approach to then calm a client/child.
At Spectrum Autism Services, Faith Martino, one of our Clinical Assistants, and Abby Hawkins, our Office Manager, are trained to teach the employees of our company proper prevention, de-escalation techniques, and also proper restraining techniques.
A Handle with Care course is provided annually at Spectrum Autism Services to re-certify staff as well as certify newly joined staff. We believe that handling our kiddos with respect, despite the difficult emotional behaviors they sometimes exude, is not only morally fair, but paramount to teaching them the successful behavioral therapy they deserve.
Schools and facilities that use Handle With Care see on average a 30-40% reduction in injuries and incidents.
Handle with Care training addresses problematic behavior early in the cycle, thus reducing the number of incidents, injuries, holding times and assaults on staff, teachers, clients, private parties and students.
The following reviews convey the positive impact of implementing Handle with Care (HWC) protocol in professional environments:
Spectrum Autism Services LLC 