Weekly Update July 7, 2023

We are pleased to announce that we have once again earned our Behavioral Health Center of Excellence (BHCOE) accreditation! Our processes, policies, and even our staff were reviewed with a fine toothed comb and we passed with flying colors!

As part of our commitment to excellence, we voluntarily participate in the BHCOE accreditation process every two years. This process helps us to ensure that our policies and procedures are in compliance with health-care related laws, and provides peace of mind to parents that you have chosen a high-quality provider. For more information about the accreditation process, please read this article.

As part of this process, we submit to an observation of our staff by the BHCOE staff. The BHCOE staff are analyzing the quality of the services we provide for kids on a regular basis. We are extremely proud to report that our staff received a perfect score on these observations! Of all the things we do on a daily basis, working with your children is the one that matters most and we are so proud of our team for achieving this amazing rating.

Each Friday in the summer, we plan for an extra fun activity and a dress up day. All the dress up days are designed to be simple ones you can do with things you have at home, please don’t feel obligated to buy anything to make these happen. Staff and children will both participate in dressing up! We'll send home a calendar with all of the dates for the summer, or you can check here for weekly details.

One of our recurring dress up days is School Spirit Day, where we all wear Strive shirts. We will provide Strive shirts for each of the children to wear.

7-14-23

Water balloons - we will have a great time tossing water balloons outside! Be sure to send a change of clothes or a bathing suit if you'd rather your child wear it. Sandals or crocs or water shoes are totally appropriate to send for this activity, just make sure we have tennis shoes for the rest of the day.

School Spirit Day - wear your Strive shirt!

7-21-23

Reading Buddies

Mismatch Day - Just wear your most mismatched outfit! Stripes with polka dots, crazy colors, socks that don't match, anything goes!

7-28-23

Fireworks Science Experiment - this is a fun activity with oil, water, and food coloring to make "fireworks" in a jar!

Super Hero Day - Wear a super hero shirt or hat, or go all out and dress as your favorite super hero! Capes are welcome :)

Today's Fun Friday activity was "make your own edible flag" snack - using a graham cracker, cool whip, and berries, kids could assemble a flag any way they liked. This one is a robot! It was a really creative interpretation.

Playing with new foods is a great way to expose a child to something different in a low pressure way. Kids are encouraged to touch the foods and arrange them any way they like. There's no pressure to eat it if they don't want to.

For 2023, instead of just sharing our background info, we are going to share some of our team's answers to a recent survey. We asked staff what they enjoy most about their jobs overall, what they like to teach the most, and what they would tell other people considering working here. We'll share answers from a new staff member each week!

This week, we'll hear from Lily, one of our amazing RBTs.

What is your proudest moment at Strive so far? "I don’t have a single proudest moment. I’m always proud and impressed when a client independently uses a skill we’ve been teaching them or gets something correct that they’ve been struggling with. I’m constantly amazed!"

What is Lily's favorite skill to teach? "I like running the “teach me language” program with one of my clients. Its really cool to see how language skills are broken down and its even more awesome to see those skills being used independently in the natural environment."

What is your favorite part of working for Strive as a company? "As an employee, you’re treated like a person & not just an investment. Other staff and leadership are always there to offer support for work-related and non work-related things. In addition, we have so many opportunities to get to know each other through team bonding and surveys like this one! "

One addition to our newsletter this year will be some definitions of terms we use most often in ABA. We know we use a lot of lingo and we want to help families understand it better. All of these terms will also be on our website in a glossary, so you can check them out anytime.

This week's term is PFA, or Practical Functional Assessment.

This term goes with last week's term, SBT, or Skill Based Treatment.

The PFA is the first step in the SBT process. From the FTF Behavioral Consulting website:

"We first conduct an interview to gather information about the situations in which problem behavior tends to occur. Then we design and implement a context in which the child’s personal reinforcers are freely available and no “triggers” for problem behavior exist. The purpose is to establish trust, build rapport, and ensure that zero problem behavior and high levels of engagement are achieved.

The results from the PFA are then used to inform a skill-based treatment (SBT)."

Once we better understand all of the components that contribute to a child engaging in challenging behavior, using the PFA process, we're much better able to teach the skills needed to replace that challenging behavior. For more on the PFA process, ask your BCBA.

We'll just keep this link right here, for your convenience. For any absences scheduled in advance, please use this form to report the dates. You may take an entire day or half day, depending on your needs.

Therapy Schedule Update Form

Here are some additional dates that the centers will be closed:

Friday, August 25th - Professional Development Day

If your family is planning a longer absence around one of those dates, or at another time, please let us know as soon as you are able!

Email: info@sc-centers.com
Website: www.sc-centers.com
Location: Burton and Brighton, MI
Phone: 810-344-8082