"What skills will strengthen the relationship between the child and their caregiver?" - Barbara Kalmanson, PhD
At VHAP, we believe that each child is unique and needs to be assessed as an individual to develop a comprehensive and multidisciplinary program customized to meet each child’s needs. Such a program endeavors to respect the dignity and worth of each child, promote each child’s capabilities and expand each child’s opportunities to function in as normative of an environment as possible.
Integrating an understanding of the neurological information-processing deficits with a relationship-based developmental model, we primarily address the core deficits involving relational, developmental and adaptive living skills. We also believe it is important to involve siblings and significant family members as part of developing an integrated intervention program. Our programs focus on helping children develop increased interests, share experiences with others, regulate their emotions and organize their behaviors. We help children become more engaged learners, competently respond to change, develop friendships with peers and find their place in the social world.
Can autistic kids be helped by a play-based program?
For children with autism, it’s a confusing world. Trying to communicate with these kids can be a struggle as they often seem to be locked inside their own impenetrable worlds. Therapists who work with autistic children are constantly on the lookout for ways to get them to engage with others.
Now, researchers at York University in Toronto are carrying out the first study of a play-based therapy program that has had some remarkable success in drawing some autistic children out of their solitary worlds and into a shared one.
In the following video, the CBC’s Ioanna Roumeliotis offers a moving look inside Floortime therapy and how it’s given one Ontario family new hope for their son.
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