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THRESHOLD’S AUTISM PROVIDER EDUCATION
SERVICES:

THRESHOLD provides direct training services and alternative educationalprograms to individuals with Autism across their full life span, and to all our family and service providers. The three main operational principles essential to success in our training services has been: 1) using structured teaching systems that align with best practice and which are applied according to individual program plans in ways that meet both each provider's and each and person's needs, 2) managing to provide low-cost family-centered training and mentoring services to people who must live, work, and cope with Autism Spectrum Conditions, and 3) offering Autism Provider Education services for both novice and experienced family and service providers in a model of Adaptive Developmentally Appropriate Practice and Theory that can be shared and utilized across our home, school and community settings within authentically inclusive practices.



L>E>A>P
Into Understanding Autism

THRESHOLD'S AUTISM ORIENTATION & INFORMATION MENTORING GROUP
Learn
about the Physical, Mental and Emotional Aspects of Autism Spectrum Conditions--Explore the the Realities and Mutual Impacts of Autism on Individuals, Families and Communities--Access the Resources We All Need to Survive Autism--Practice Useful Problem Defining and Solving Strategies. For all family and service providers who must live, work and cope with the reality of Autism across home, school and/or community. It is designed for adults (parents and all other intervention providers) who are seeking to build their knowledge, awareness, skills, and ablities to understand and reach a consensus about how to relate with people with and without Autism across the full developmental spectrum and across our life spans. While this series is founded on universal best practices for adult family and service provider development for parents and professionals, this series can also help any adult provider determine which Autism intervention method they wish to pursue next. Participants report that " I finally get it--I really understand Autism now."
L>E>A>P serves as a
an introductory group for our C.A.L.M. parenting group locally or call our office for phone-based services at a distance. This is a free service through 2010.






C.A.L.M.
"GET ON THE NO-MORE-TANTRUMS TRAIL"

A COMMUNITY SURVIVORS WORKSHOP FOR OUR FAMILIES & OTHER AUTISM PROVIDERS
In this dynamic and practical presentation you can "Learn to Communicate Clearly as an Authoritative Adult who can set Limits with Love and foster Mutual Maturity." This lets us help young children to adults along the full spectrum of Autism who may lose, or have not yet gained, self-control realize their full potentials. It also allows us to build basic best practice strategies, as a very solid foundation to behavioral, eclectic or developmental model approaches.With this training you can begin to immediately transform your relationship with all your children and students, with and without Autism. This workshop is intended for parents, guardians, teachers, and therapists of children (and adults) with Autism who are tantruming, and all of those of us struggling to parent and teach each other in our community. Participants report that it is a "truly life changing workshop."
C-A-L-M serves as a an introductory group for our A.D.A.P.T. study group.

NEW GROUP ENROLLMENT OPENS THIS SUMMER FOR NEW AND FORMER CALM TRAINEES THIS FALL 2010.




A.D.A.P.T.
Adaptive Developmentally Appropriate Practice and Theory

OUR COMPREHENSIVE AUTISM PROVIDER STUDY GROUP
For all family and service providers who must live, work and cope with the reality of Autism in their home, school, and community skills training settings. It is designed for any adults who are seeking to become more ready, able, and willing to offer optitum care, effective education, and life span adult skills training to people with Autism and related conditions. This training model integrates best practices from well-established functional developmental Autism intervention models into more flexible, functional, and feasible ways of living, working and coping for both people with and without Autism. Participants report, and also can demonstrate, all the positive, proactive, and productive changes they were seeking as parents and teachers. This is the final level of our training groups, after A.D.A.P.T you, your family, and school, can be ready, able and willing to Catch the TRAIN to best Autism practice town as your final destination.

\NEW GROUP ENROLLMENT OPENS EARLY THIS FALL FOR CALM GRADS AND ADAPT ALUM LATER THSI FALL 2010..




Catch the:-)TRAIN>
###############################
THRESHOLD GRADS Mentoring Groups

All our training services are provided with follow up to each session and each series to ensure our graduates ongoing success.
During each training series, and once a month thereafter, you will be able to access individual consultation time and no or low cost group follow-up sessions to help you reflect on, think through and put into actions each of the elements of our training service models

TRAIN GROUP 2010 IS NOW OPEN FOUR OUR PREVIOUS ADAPT GRADS WITH EXPERIENCE USING THE ADAPT MODEL.




AND VERY SOON WE WILL BE RELAUNCHING OUR

"BIG THEMES"
FUN•CTIONAL HOLISTIC INCLUSIVE CURRICULUM
It's not rocket science--its rocket fuel for your program

Big Themes is an enjoyABLE and FUNctional way to help family and service providers develop inclusive and more adaptive developmental practice curriculum and programs for students with and without Autism. Big Themes twelve monthly study guides allow educational and therapeutic providers to follow one overall theme each month for your whole group of students with and without Autism, while still specifically individualizing both work and recreational activities to the ableness and learning style of individual students and provides in life long learning programs.




Email us: contact@understandingautism.org

Call us:
503-375-9462

Be sure to include your name, address, phone and specific service or program information request in your messages. You will not be contacted further or solicited by anyone at THRESHOLD after we respond to your initial requests, unless you ask to be put on our regular training notice contact list.






THRESHOLD’S ALTERNATIVE AUTISM EDUCATION
PROGRAMS:

THRESHOLD provides alternative educational programs and direct training services to individuals with Autism across their full life span, and to all our family and service providers. The three main operational principles essential to success in our Autism programs has been: 1) using structured teaching systems that align with best practice and which are applied according to individual program plans in ways that meet both each provider's and each and person's needs, 2) managing to provide low-cost family-centered cooperative programs for people who must live, work, and cope with Autism Spectrum Conditions, and 3) offering Autism Provider Education services for both novice and experienced family and service providers in a model of Adaptive Developmentally Appropriate Practice and Theory that can be shared and utilized across our home, school and community settings within authentically inclusive practices.

HOWEVER, read on before you get too excited.

Applications for enrollment are open & program registration may be offered to eligible families & their children. All of our programs require that at least one family provider have completed our ADAPT trainings and that the student is on structure in their own home before beginning the program. Our less expensive alternative coop programs require that a trained graduate attend with the child.
All our programs require year round enrollment, therefore we do not do any new program intakes that begin at the summer quarter.




Step Up: Foundational Program
for Young Children with Autism & Related Disorders

Step-Up is a fee-based, low-ratio, intensive (20-40 hours per week) shorter-term school readiness program. It is intended to help quickly prepare newly identified young children for initial transition to placements in home and/or community-based educational settings using indepedent structured teaching systems, big themes curriculum, guide stories, and adaptive expressive systems . Parents are required to have been enrolled in our full training series for atleast three months. to be eligible to enroll/attend Step-Up. However, often parents who complete our trainings may soon recognize that they now have many alternatives to this kind of higher cost programs!

Read on before you get too excited.

Step-Up is usually a 3-12 month program for children 2-7 years old. It is a developmental model program. It is NOT an ABA program. Threshold's programs are NOT eligible for publically funded EI/ECSE program placements.Tuition is $15/per hour for paraprofessonal program development assistance within Our Open Door cooperative (This equals $2000.00 per month for our full time year round 40 week calendar program, and we require a minimum of a 20 hour/half time placement for our Step-Up students. For less hours we suggest Our Open Door School below.) Additional Therapy services may be available for Step-Up students in collaboration with local professioinal providers. Our ADAPT provider training and monthly family support groups are included with your acceptance and pre-paid Step-Up enrollment. Each ADAPT + Step-Up enrollment is offered on a quarterly basis and our next ADAPT training is enrolling now.

INDIVIDUAL STEP-UP ENROLLMENT IS AVAILABLE ON WAIT LIST FOR FALL 2010.




Our Open Door School:
An Alternative Private Parent Cooperative Program

Our Open Door School is a very low-cost, very low-ratio, private cooperative program setting using individualized structured teaching systems complimented by our own Big Themes™ curriculum and Carol Grey Social Story™ and our Social Talk strategies. This program is intended to offer students and their parents a private family-centered educational alternative and/or supplement to placements in their home or community schools. Full-time attendance is available, but parents may also utilize Our Open Door School program as an equivalent part-time support for home school plans or public school programs, in order to augment skill growth and to promote generalization of skills across home and community settings.

HOWEVER, read on before you get too excited.

A trained parent, or other adult provided by the family, must always attend with each student as their primary program provider across settings. Co-op member family provider candidate are required to first successfully complete: 1) our A.D.A.P.T. training series 2) all assigned home program development work; 3) an application to enroll and registration; 4) successful, and; participation for one quarter in the Entry Way coop training and assessment-based life span plan development. All this must be finished before beginning to attend Our Open Door School on site. No one who has completed these requirements has ever been denied access. So this is not an exclusive program, just a very low-cost and very successful one. However, many parents achieve so many positive outcomes of all their efforts on the way into this program, that they feel they don't really need to go on to attend full-time here after all. They may continue to combine public school and a home tutoring program or become homeschoolers. Others come back after they transition to public school, after that path becomes too negative or difficult. Our Open Door School grads and alums often spend time in our Windows of Opportunity program as a full-time or part-time after school program. Either way we see much long-term provider and student success with this program path.

OUR OPEN DOOR SCHOOL ENROLLMENT WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR ADAPT TRAINING GRAD FAMILIES AS OF WINTER 2010.




Window of Opportunity:
Making Careers Out of Entry Level Jobs

Windows of Opportunity is a tuition/work study scholarship based, independent work setting for older children. It is intended to prepare adolescents and young adults with Autism for transition to an optimal independent vocational placement in residences, sheltered workshops or in typical community settings using structured teaching. Windows is intended to transition students out of educational programs that can no longer offer them full-day academic skill growth.

HOWEVER, read on before you get too excited.

While this program can accommodate the full spectrum of individuals with Autism, including more or less verbal students with or without developmental delays, both students and their parents must have completed training, get very well experienced, and be fully autonomous in their use of structured teaching strategies and systems across home, school, and community and go through an individualized job application process. So while we are always very willing work with all students and families who are struggling in your other programs, in Windows we can only work with families and employ those individuals who are ready, able, and willing to work to reach for their full vocational potentials using independent structured work systems in the jobs we currently offer.

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY SLOTS REOPEN FOR OPEN DOOR GRADS AND WINDOWS ALUM AS OF WINTER TERM 2010.