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The Behavioral Intervention Group is founded on ABA and has been developed to maximize the behavior, learning, independence, communication, play, social development, well-being and happiness of each child we work with. BIG is committed to taking a highly personalized approach that adapts each child's program specifically to meet his or her needs whether that be for early learners and those more affected with autism or advanced learners and those diagnosed with asperger‘s syndrome. BIG’s aim is to make significant improvement to the lives of each child we work with and their families. |
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Initial Workshop
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While communication is vital for every level of program within BIG, it is essential to those children who have no formal communication skills, therefore BIG views communication as a priority for every child’s program. BIG targets appropriate communication skills, be it verbal (speech) or non verbal (PECS, Makaton, Sign Language). Because the Clinic Director has an MSc in Speech and Language Therapy and Pathology, her expertise is highly utilized. As a child develops appropriate communication skills, challenging behavior naturally reduces. As communication is targeted so is; behavior management, imitative skills, speech development, language comprehension, matching, self-help skills, basic play skills and early social skills. Generalization is inherent to each program. Not only will the treatment team generalize throughout their sessions, but the family will also be responsible for generalizing all taught skills, varying the materials, language used, environment and level of distraction.
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A child at the intermediate stages of intervention, has a basic foundation from which to build. Skills such as early academic, reading comprehension, writing composition, early math concepts, social use of language, cause-effect relationships, observational learning and theory of mind are targeted. These and other skills aim to ultimately enable the child to learn from conventional teaching methods in a mainstream classroom. A more advanced reinforcement system is introduced such as token economy. Generalization continues to be a vital part of the program. Where appropriate school integration occurs very gradually and increases subject to the child’s performance. A member of the home treatment team acts as a shadow to support this transition. The shadow facilitates peer interactions as well as ensuring the child is taking full advantage of the school setting.
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In more advanced stages of intervention the child is taught both at home and school. Skills such as more complex academic, reading, writing and math concepts. In addition to executive reasoning skills, pragmatics, social language, higher order thinking skills, organizational skills and independent behavior management skills. The shadow support provided in school is gradually withdrawn and sport and social activities outside of school are encouraged to further develop social awareness and independence.
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