Rooted with a long history on Long Island, The Institute for Children with Autism and Related Disorders (ICA) was initially established by the late Mike Darcy, founder of the Young Autism Program (YAP), with the goal of providing services to students and their families that focuses on developing essential skills, overall independence, and improvements in quality of life.
Working exclusively through and with the School Districts, the development of protocols for students, families, and school districts are individualized and child-centered to meet their specific needs. ICA is committed to staff development and clinical expertise, facilitating this process by providing ongoing education and modeling skills for school personnel while maintaining a collaborative approach that helps to increase school personnel competency to support the needs of neurodivergent learners. When necessary they can also provide an assessment of district needs to help facilitate systematic changes.
At the heart of ICA, their behavior consultants work diligently to provide support to school personnel via behavior consultation. They pride themselves in only using evidence based practices centered in applied behavior analysis. The main goal is to teach administrators, teachers, support staff, and paraprofessionals how to deliver highly effective services to their students. ICA can provide support across all levels of the school district including systematic development of policy and procedures, creation of novel programs within the district, classroom management skills, and individual support for students. During the consultation process they coordinate with other providers to ensure consistency and develop recommendations for students based on direct observation, assessments, and data analysis. The aim of services is to support school personnel in creating supportive environments for students that facilitate inclusion and independence. In addition ICA looks to fade back services within the district as school personnel improve their skills.
To extend the home-school connection and generalize skills across settings, ICS offers parent training to families looking for extra support. Their parent trainers can come into the home to help caregivers develop socially valid goals for their child and create tailored plans to help improve communication, daily living, and community skills. Parent trainers will provide extensive training to caregivers, as well as the offering of group parent training lectures to help parents learn about specific topics that will help them facilitate independence for their child.
ICA staff can also provide behavior intervention services to students who require more intensive interventions in the home to help generalize skills learned in school. Their highly trained staff can provide 1:1 support to help facilitate goal acquisition and decrease interfering behaviors. Caregivers are welcomed to partake or observe sessions to help facilitate carryover.
At ICA they can develop training for school personnel focusing on a variety of areas, specializing in individualizing training to meet the needs of the district. Recent topics include IEP and behavioral data collection for paraprofessionals, development of an FBA/BIP for school psychologists, and how to develop socially valid goals for teachers.
ICA now offers the Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) training to school districts who are looking to have school personnel gain a better understanding of applied behavior analysis and refine the necessary skills needed to work with a variety of students. This comprehensive 40 hour training can be provided in-person or virtually. For districts looking to take this a step further, we offer the necessary assessment and ongoing supervision for school personnel to become certified.
Providing comprehensive behavioral assessments to help determine your student’s needs, ICA specializes in conducting functional behavioral assessments (FBA) to determine why interfering behaviors may be occurring. Based on the results of the FBA, they can develop a behavior intervention plan that focuses on reinforcement procedures and teaching replacement behaviors, rollout data collection systems, and set up visual displays. They will also provide ongoing training to school personnel to execute developed protocols and provide ongoing oversight to ensure treatment fidelity among staff.
Another element of the assessment process focuses on the use of criterion based assessments to help the team develop skill acquisition goals. Some commonly used assessments in the practice include the ABLLS, VB-MAPP, and Essentials for Living.
The overall mission of ICA is to assist children with differing needs to attain a greater level of independence by focusing on the development of essential skills that are necessary for home, school, and community. The ICA supports school personnel, caregivers, and children by helping them establish socially valid goals as well as help individual communities understand the needs of neurodivergent individuals.
For more information please call 631-727-7691 or email jkeene@icardus.org and gcarmody@icardus.org
