Keri Taylor has seen a lot of changes — small and large — in the families she works with at Partners in Excellence. And, sometimes, it is the smallest changes that make the biggest difference.
The families go on their first vacation together. They get invited to a birthday party — and accept the invitation. Their daughter enrolls in kindergarten. Their son makes and holds eye contact for more than five seconds.
Or, as one mother wrote in a letter to Taylor, “This is the first Christmas that we’re invited to my brother’s house.”
As director of Partners in Excellence’s Burnsville center, Taylor works with children on the autism spectrum every day. She and these families understand what it means to be able to take a child who may have exhibited uncontrollable and aggressive behaviors to a social event that many take for granted. In these cases, these children have learned the social skills they need through their own hard work and that of their parents and therapists.
Partners in Excellence, founded in 2001 by Deb Thomas, serves about 100 kids on three campuses, in Burnsville, North St. Paul, and Edina.
The kids, ages 1 to 10, spend either 20 or 40 hours a week at the center. They work one on one with therapists in a program known as applied behavioral analysis. ABA relies heavily on observation, positive reinforcement, and meticulous recordkeeping. Thick binders hold records of each child’s benchmarks and goals, from vocabulary to eye contact, charting their progress daily. The program and goals are customized for each child, with a strong emphasis on measurable outcomes. “From the beginning we look to the end,” Taylor explains.
Therapists also work with parents and other family members to help them continue to get the same good results when they are outside of the center, in their homes and communities. “It doesn’t matter what [the kids] do here, it matters what they do at home,” she adds.
Early treatment gets results
Housed in a converted warehouse, the Burnsville center is as bright and cheery as any daycare, with individual “pods” divided by age. The kids each have their own cubicle, which serves as home base and where they can do “table work” with therapists — sorting, counting, talking.
From there they move around to participate in group activities, check out age-appropriate toys, and bounce on the trampoline. Even day-to-day activities, like lunch and snacks, become opportunities to advance their social skills. And, when kids need a break from the stimulation of the center, they can spend time in the multisensory room. This special room, which many adults would find as painfully overstimulating as a disco, is filled with the sorts of stimulation that some people with autism find comforting: a ball pit, a disco ball, fiber lights, deep cushions, and sound and light effects.
As we learn more about autism and children are being diagnosed earlier and earlier, the opportunities for early treatment are producing exciting results. Thomas says her data show a marked increase in positive outcomes for kids who first come to the center at 1, 2, or 3 years old.
Thomas says it is sometimes hard to convince parents to bring their children to the center full-time, but that it is imperative to get the most out of the therapies. “I understand you want the summer with your child,” she says sympathetically, “but you can have that when they’re 5 or 6, if they are here now.”
“Some of our kids are now in the third, fourth, and fifth grades. Seeing those kids functioning with their peers, seeing the level of contentment in their families, well, it fills me up,” Thomas says. She also raised a son with a physical disability and knows how hard it can be for parents to wade into uncertain waters. “When you first get that diagnosis, you just don’t know what your life will be.”
Taylor, Thomas, and the therapists and families at Partners and Excellence have seen a glimpse of what the future can be for each of the new families that come through the door.
