Program
From full-day, year-round education and treatment based on the principles of ABA to parent training, frequent home visits and transition to a variety of school settings. Find out how New Haven can help you, your child and our community.
- Program Overview
- Support for Families
- The Upper School
- The Lower School
- Inclusion and Transition
- Home Program
- Our Research Group
- Training for Staff
Program Overview
New Haven Learning Centre offers:- Full-day, year-round treatment and education based on the principles of ABA for students aged 2 ½ to 21 in an actual school setting
» Learn more - Transition and follow-up services for students who graduate from New Haven to less restrictive settings
» Learn more - Ongoing data collection to monitor student progress
- Intensive, on-going training and professional development for instructors
» Learn more - Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) that focus on the development of academic, language, social, leisure, play, community and motor skills, through research based teaching procedures
- Progress reports submitted to families every 6 months that serve as an evaluation of the student's progress toward meeting the individualized educational goals and objectives on the IEP
- Skills taught systematically through highly structured one-to-one and small group teaching sessions
- Consultation services to other agencies to assist in the development of new ABA treatment and education programs
Support for Families
Families are an integral part of a students' program. To ensure that each students' and families' needs are met beyond the school day, New Haven also provides:- Monthly classroom observation hours by family members
- Parent training in the classroom
- Intensive in-home support to transfer skills already learned at school, develop specific new skills and provide behaviour reduction strategies for parents both at home and in the community
- Training, support and daily communication is also available to parents and home-based staff in order to promote consistency across settings and to help improve the quality of children's interactions with their family and caregivers.
- Home visits by staff approximately twice per month in order to facilitate implementation of programs and provide support for in-home and community based programming as well as for challenging issues
- Transition and follow-up services for students who graduate from New Haven to less restrictive settings
» Learn more - Community outreach through an annual professional conference featuring internationally recognized experts in autism and ABA as well as monthly tours and information sessions at New Haven
» Learn more - Family education workshops
- Financial assistance for families in need
» Learn more
The Upper School
New Haven's newly developed Upper School Program delivers ongoing, functional education for adolescents and young adults aged 10 through 21. The emphasis of this program is on skill building in areas such as recreational and leisure skills, life skills, independent living skills, community integration, as well as volunteer and job placement and coaching in school, home, and community settings.
The Lower School
New Haven's Lower School program provides intensive one-to-one and small group instruction for students aged 2 through to 10. Research suggests that a significant percentage of pre-school-aged children with autism who can access vital ABA based services will successfully make the transition to regular school. The emphasis of this program is on building academic, language, social, leisure, play, community and motor skills.
Inclusion and Transition
Early intensive intervention, based on the principles of Applied Behaviour Analysis, allows some of our students to attend a regular education classroom in their neighbourhood school.
Our one-to-one model allows us to support the student in the inclusive setting to ensure they actively participate and interact with their peers. Data are collected on a daily basis to ensure the student is learning and benefiting from the regular education setting.
New Haven also provides transitional services to students going to less restrictive settings. This can include school staff training, and systematic fading of New Haven's support.
Home Program
Once enrolled at New Haven, each family has the opportunity to access our home programming service. A trained New Haven staff member supervises each student's in-home program approximately twice a month.
Parents select educational and behavioural goals with the assistance of the Clinical Team (i.e., Clinical Director, Associate Clinical Director, & Clinical Coordinators). A staff member will then visit the student's home to help implement and monitor the progress of the goals.
Our Research Group
New Haven offers a research group for staff members. The group meets regularly to review current research and the application of it to interventions at the centre. They replicate designs and ideas for projects at the centre to both improve the quality of programming for our students as well as to develop the research skills of the participants.
The objective of this group is to contribute to the behaviour analytic community by presenting findings at local, national and international conferences.
Training for Staff
To help staff prepare for their critically important roles as educators, New Haven Learning Centre provides extensive initial training that is both theory-based and practice-oriented. Ongoing training is offered regularly on a wide array of important topics such as:- The principles surrounding increasing and decreasing behaviour
- The importance of reinforcement and reinforcer effectiveness
- Teaching staff to replace challenging behaviour with new coping strategies
- Promoting spontaneous communication
- Helping children both retain and generalize their skills using a variety of teaching techniques
Staff members also attend workshops and seminars on current topics in the field of applied behaviour analysis to ensure that their knowledge remains current.
New Haven instructors are subject to a four-month probationary period at which time they are evaluated through a formal observation of their clinical performance. Before an instructor is placed in the classroom, he/she undergoes New Haven's intensive and highly effective staff training.
Staff training commences upon the hiring of a new Instructor and continues until the Clinical Team (i.e., Clinical Director, Associate Clinical Director, Clinical Coordinators, & Lead Instructors) decides through testing, observation, and assessment measures, that the new Instructor is ready to begin working with the students. A period of observation and coaching ensues before the new instructor is positioned to work independently with the students.
Throughout the school year, the Clinical Team provides ongoing supervision and training to all instructors. Professional development is provided in both formal and informal sessions to all staff.