Having your child receive a diagnosis of Autism, Developmental Delay, or a Developmental Disability can be overwhelming. Is there a way out? Can we offer them a safer future? Fortunately, therapy is available, but before commencing with that, there is a need to consider a lot. It is critical to work quickly and smartly to help the child catch up with developmental milestones before they get too far behind.
BehaviorSpan, a leading ABA therapy service, was founded in Denver in 2015 by Dr. J. James Tomash (Board Certified Behavior Analyst- Doctorate) and his wife Nicole Da Lima Leitao (Board Certified Behavior Analyst). Between them, they have over 18 years of experience working with a variety of children and adults with different Developmental Disabilities. Over time, they developed a model based on their results - fine-tuning and sometimes radically changing their approach to pursue the best possible outcomes they could get for their clients.
Today they have a very specific and fine-tuned system. It gets optimal results by providing services to young children who have been diagnosed- providing intensive, center-based, Early Intervention ABA therapy. On average, it takes about one year in their program for a child to ‘graduate’- ready to go to school or preschool. While these results aren’t certain for all children, the critical step is to help them learn as many foundational skills as quickly as possible to set them up for a full and happy life. The program is based on 4 principles:
Early Intervention: The team at BehaviorSpan works with the child as young as possible (18 months - 6 years old) when they learn the fastest. It is critical to help them catch up on developmental milestones before their delay compounds over time and they lose more and more opportunities.
Individualized, results-driven treatment: Each child is different, and receives a completely individualized plan, based on assessments, helping them learn as quickly as possible. Their plan is constantly revised and optimized based on hundreds of data points we take each day. At a minimum, a BCBA revises each client’s plan twice per week.
Intensive: We work with our clients like learning is their full-time job. Most come in for 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, and spend their time learning. During that time, they have a Behavior Therapist (BT) who works one-on-one with them, helping them succeed in meeting goals as quickly as possible.
Center-based: We work with our children in our centers, where their progress is monitored constantly. Their BT can be trained to implement their plans perfectly. We combine this with frequent parent training to ensure the child’s success generalizes to home.
By adhering to the above principles, we have been able to get incredible results. As a result, we have been able to help children reach and surpass their developmental milestones in language, social skills, daily living skills, motor coordination, cognition, toileting, feeding themselves, avoiding problem behavior, and other areas.
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