Holistic Intervention Key to Success for Children with Special Needs

Collaborative, family-centered, individualized treatment plans in early intervention provide care that is easier for families and less disjointed than a more traditional single therapy approach for young children with special needs.

Project Memphis (PM) is the overarching name of two grant-funded early intervention programs operating within the University of Memphis. Both programs serve very young children with special needs, and both are funded by the Tennessee Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (DIDD)/Tennessee Early Intervention System (TEIS) from 2021-2024.

PM Home and Community (PM HC) is one of the two grants under the PM umbrella. PM HC provides home-based developmental therapy services to children and families from birth to up to 48 months while working in tandem with other service professionals based on the child’s Individual Family Service Plan, IFSP. Specifically, PM HC staff provide developmental therapy for the child, family, caretaker, and/or provider using a routines-based approach to therapy in their natural environment to best work within the family dynamic. Within this grant cycle, PM HC sees an average of 97-140 families per month, yielding a total of 3,061 hours of therapy provided to date.

The other grant under the PM umbrella is PM Ready. PM Ready provides group therapeutic services to children, birth through 36 months of age, with autism or suspected autism with delays in the following domains: social-emotional, communicative, or behavior. Specifically, PM ready’s therapy is focused on teaching preschool readiness skills aimed at ensuring the children thrive in inclusive classrooms or other natural environments alongside peers once preschool aged. To achieve this, PM Ready offers a myriad of services to the child and family including a psychological evaluation, ABA-focused developmental therapy, crisis counseling, and a family connect program designed to assist families with wraparound supportive services. Our group therapy is provided for 2.5 hours twice a week per the specifications of the child’s IFSP. We conduct each session with a child to therapist ratio of 2:1. The program is designed to serve 16 families at one time with two cohorts of eight and they have served over 35 families since the program opened. Their curriculum and therapeutic practices are selected from evidence-based practices across the fields of applied behavior analysis (ABA), early intervention, special education, child development, social work, and psychology. Currently, our group therapy services are housed at the Porter Leath -University of Memphis Early Childhood Education Academy in the Orange Mound area of Memphis.  

Across both grants, they collect qualitative and quantitative data to measure the impact of their projected outcomes, ensure compliance, and ensure a timely delivery of services during the limited window of time they have with each child. Their primary goal is to increase the research on a multi-disciplinary approach using a family-centered, individualized treatment plan to early intervention rooted in ABA.

Their secondary goal is to set UofM apart by becoming a leader in early intervention research and services for children with special needs. A third goal is to be systematic in their approach to blending disciplines, designing curriculum, and the collection of data (individually and collectively) to ensure data drives decisions. Based on this approach, selected therapies, and targeted domains, they project significant gains for their clients in the areas of language and social skill acquisition​, behavior management, adaptive skills, social-emotional regulation, and academic readiness. For their families, they anticipate that a more collaborative and holistic method to early intervention will be a more responsive, integrated, and seamless approach to care that is easier for families and less disjointed than a more traditional single therapy approach to care for a young child with special needs.

In addition, both of the PM programs provide interdisciplinary education, training, clinical supervision, and student practicum experiences for UofM students which will contribute to the development of highly qualified staff experienced in multi-disciplinary early intervention services ready to continue initial work and advance the field for years and generations to come.  

For more information on these programs and/or grants, contact Dr. Laura Casey, professor in Instruction Curriculum Leadership, at lpcasey@memphis.edu or Charmaine Sego, Project Director, at cssego@memphis.edu.