Ok, so I might not be a daily blogger as I’d intended originally, but new year, new update. I’ll do my best to do at least 2 per month – that sounds fair, right?

Anyways, 2010 is going to be great. It seems like the insurance companies are doing a much better job now. Authorizations are not exactly flying into our hands, but they are also not the unattainable myths that they once were. We’ve developed some wonderful contacts with some of the insurers – believe it or not, there are helpful people in those offices who care if you get service. I didn’t say there were a lot of them, but we’ve been able to find a few.

We’re also gearing up our plans for summer camp. It may seem premature, but believe it or not we’ve been having families and agencies asking already. So – give the people what they want – right? I was talking with Chrystal, our new Director of School Programming, today and she thinks a large group camp 10 -12 kids with 2 staff would be really great for a high functioning and typical kids social skills group. She just may be right. This is something we will definitely be putting together. We’re also planning to DEFINITELY have a pre-school summer camp. It’s going to be kind of Montessori style – hands on, lots of play, for 2 – 4 year olds with ASD. Camp this summer is going to be geared more toward just being a socially engaging experience than trying to accomplish individual goals.We’ve found in past camps it’s just not possible to achieve the goals of one on one therapy in small group environments. We’re going to be tracking a few basic targets, like number of social initiations or time spent engaging on task as our measures. Kids who are interested in a more intensive experience will of course still be able to sign up for one on one therapy.

What else? Well, if you read the e-mail notice – you already know that Jessica’s last day is next Friday. I’m personally sad to see her go. A good worker and a good friend, she’s just extremely put together and a rare find. The truth is though, I knew several months ago that she’s be leaving soon. I told my husband I could tell she was getting that ‘BCBA itch’ I call it. Once one reaches the pinnacle of our field – BCBA certification – they want to go to big, bad things. I get that – I mean, I started a company with my BCBA itch! I always hope our staff will stay forever, but I know that we are a training ground – and we’re designed by me to be just that. I have a goal of training people to do superior ABA services and amazing programming and just to be the best behavior analysts around. Once they know how to do that, I like them to go off and share that with someone else.

One last thing – we have a preliminary program to our amazing DataTrack software. By February 1, all data, daily notes, etc. will be computer based. No, I didn’t say web-based, we’re not there yet. But, we’re one step closer. I’ll try to remember to give an update once we have it running.

Best wishes for the new year. I hope all you beautiful readers have as positive and outlook about 2010 as I do.