Date and Time
Monday Apr 23, 2018
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM CDT
April 23, 2018
10 a.m.
Location
Easterseals North Texas
4443 N. Josey Lane, Suite 100
Carrollton, TX 75010-4677
Fees/Admission
Free
Contact Information
Please reply to Denise at 817-759-7914 or
dwilkerson@ntx.easterseals.com by April 18th.
Send Email
Description
Please join us for a Celebration of our Autism Treatment Program’s 10-year Anniversary and the people who made it possible. The Honorable Florence Shapiro, Dr. Shahla Ala'i-Rosales, and Dr. Jesus Rosales-Ruiz. Easterseals North Texas (ESNT) is celebrating ten years of providing high-quality services to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Families of clients old and new will gather on Monday, April 23 at the ESNT Center in Carrollton to thank the people who made the Autism Treatment Program possible. In 2008, Sen. Shapiro was instrumental in passing legislation to provide state-funded services for children with autism. The Autism Program started as a pilot project, under the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitation Services, in fiscal year (FY) 2008 and was established to extend treatment services, including Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), to children ages 3 through 8 with a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. Since that time, the program, now overseen by Texas Health and Human Services, has expanded throughout the state and currently serves children 3 through 15 years with a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. In 2008, because of this funding, ESNT, in collaboration with Dr. Shahla Ala'i-Rosales and Dr. Jesus Rosales-Ruiz from the Department of Behavior Analysis at the University of North Texas, created a new service line to better serve children in our community living with autism. Since that time, the ongoing collaboration has allowed staff and faculty to work closely together to provide evidence-based services to hundreds of families, and conduct research that continues to improve ABA understanding “We are indebted to Senator Shapiro because our Autism Treatment Program would not exist without her vision to ensure all children have access to high quality services.” Jennifer Friesen, VP of Programs and Services at ESNT. “The collaboration with UNT has been instrumental in providing evidence-based services to children, who are traditionally underserved, in a collaborative, comprehensive, and culturally sensitive manner. I am so proud of all our team has accomplished, and will continue to accomplish, in this program. The skills our clients have gained are incredible.” ESNT, also, operates a licensed and fully inclusive child development center where children with ASD learn alongside typically developing peers. This program is a fully replicated Walden model school, certified and designed after the school at Emory University. ESNT’s Child Development Program in Carrollton is the only inclusive preschool program of this kind in Texas.