"What do the letters in A.D.A.P.T. stand for?"
Adaptive Developmentally Appropriate Practice & Theory

"What does that mean?"
Adaptive means that we can all become hopeful, independent, purposeful, competent, and flexible enough to survive, function, and even thrive in the face of Autism. Developmentally is how we can become ready to help ourselves and others grow, change, and become stable and healthy in very proactive, positive and effective ways in relation to who we truely are as people with and without Autism. Appropriate means that we will begin to understand Autism in ways that help us become able to problem define and solve with easy useful open observation strategies that help us match our parenting and teaching strategies to the persons we care for and teach. Practice means we will put all the information presented, and resources we can access, to practical use as we live, work, and cope with Autism. Theory just means that we now have well established research that can provide us with clear, comprehensive, and reliable maps of the worlds of people with and without Autism that we may follow across home, school and communities we do not experience being lost anymore. Together these elements combine help us all realize our fullest potentials to gain knowledge, awareness, skills and ableness, whether we are people with or without Autism.

Where did the A.D.A.P.T model come from? Is it based on well-established rersearch
The A.D.A.P.T series is an adult education model designed to facilitate adult provider development for parents, teachers and therapists. The intervention strategies presented within THRESHOLD's model are founded on “Structured Teaching” strategies developed across several decades of federally funded public research into effective and affordable Autism Intervention at the University of North Carolina/ Division TEACCH. A.D.A.P.T. also includes an number of other fully compatible adaptive developmental Autism models that fit well within the UNC model . At THRESHOLD we have extensively trained in, and applied, each of these developmental theories and practice models with great success for fifteen years. We have found that they offer elegant and mutual opportunities for gains in knowledge, awareness, skills and ableness for people with and without Autism, but that typical adult providers need specific kinds of training and experience to impliment them. Providers who have chosen to apply these models consistently report high levels of satisfaction, creativity in application, significant mutual skill growth, and relief from the mutual binds of Autism across home, school, and community. A.D.A.P.T., and all of its sources of developmental interventions, offer family and service providers a positive, proactive, flexible, affordable, humane, functional comprehensive intervention option, as a distinct alternative to behavioral or eclectic approaches. However, we want to be clear that we fully support ALL family-centered model options and all family and service providers seeking to offer best practices to our Autism community, and will help families find the model that matches with their needs, as our first priority.

"Who presents the training?"
The A.D.A.P.T trainings are presented by Sharone Lee, M.A..
Ms. Lee has degrees in Visual Communication Design, Developmental Psychology, and Human Development with a specialization in Parent Education and Provider Community Leadership. She is currently working on her doctoral degree in Human and Organizational Systems and Development. Sharone was the director of our organizations UNC/TEACCH associate program, "Step-Up™" from 1992 to 1995, which achieved official affiliate level program status and, more importantly, certification quality practices in our work with children with Autism. Since then, Sharone has continued as our Executive Director and the coordinator of our alternative family cooperative programs "Our Open Door School" and "Windows of Opportunity™" which have duplicated Step-Up's success and more. (See the Our Programs link). In addition, she has both completed and conducted hundreds of hours of training in best human development and relations practices. More importantly, she has lived, worked and cope with people with Autism, across the spectrum and our full life spans, since 1991. She deeply cares and is very knowledgeable about all of those of us who must live, work and cope with Autism, as people with and without Autism, and she truly enjoys training other family and service providers in these models.

"What is included in the training fee?"
The former formal series required/presented about 30 hours of classroom training here on site along with a series of homework practice assignments of about 10 hours. The new model allows individual parents and teachers to work at their own pace in online and face to face mentoring groups focused on the problems that their enrollee group are currently facing, with more hands on work available here at the site. Access to our public website and its L>E>A>P texts is complemented by coded access to private webtexts and work group tasks for the C-A-L-M & A.D.A.P.T Autism provider education series.

For professional service providers the monthly subscription/annual tuition cost is a per-person fee. For families of children with Autism the subscription covers a child’s whole “home team.” See our Current Training link for specific information.

"Are there any special fee arrangements possible?"
We work to keep our training fees far below their actual costs. So all our fees represent a special fee arrangement. There may be public and/or private sources of charitable assistance and scholarships available to family or service providers. We may also offer further reduced rates through grants for large groups. Examples of travel-to-site-based contract terms are available on request to qualified prospective agencies.

"What if these times do not work for me or my group?"
Series calendar schedules are always negotiable based on each groups current needs and our trainer’s availability. Large groups of 16-48 enrollees may also propose their own calendar pace and locations for their own contracted A.D.A.P.T. series. Those groups may set the sessions up as 5-day long intensives, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly or classes each quarter.

"What do the A.D.A.P.T. sessions cover?"
Groups will self-construct their work from our four critical training units and these key areas of adult provider education. Below is the outline of our former more formal styles of the A.D.A.P.T Training to give exemplars of its contents.

First Step™ presents a comprehensive base of Autism information as our course content. This lets us learn a shared base of knowledge founded on well-estabished theory of and research into human developmental domains across all our life spans.

Life Shift™ offers us a safer context for increasing our awareness of the realities we face with Autism. We explore how teams may reach a clear consensus on meeting the needs of, and establishing positive relations between, people with and without Autism.

Missing Pieces™ affords a well-organized process for accessing key resources and strategies that let us experience immediate success in parenting and teaching people with Autism.

On Track™ demonstrates the processes of informal assessment and setting up and using structured teaching methods for parents and teachers, which naturally lead to optimum developmental outcomes using available family and community resources.

• Session 1:
  Orientation--Creating a Foundation of Autism Provider Readiness:
  How to deepen our awareness of the diversity of our development and increase knowledge of our individual able gains and losses. How to access to the resources we all need to survive and to be better able-to-function while we are following this course.
  
  Sessions 2 & 3:
  Introduction--Increasing our Autism Provider Ableness:
  Learn about Autism Spectrum Conditons and the Three Main Autism Intervention Models.
  How to develop more accurate Autism assessment skills and universal best Autism practices across settings.
  
  Sessions 4 & 5:
  Developing Understandable Environments in Space and Productive Work and Recreation Routines in Time:
  Physical Aspects of Autism and Mutual Sensorimotor Impacts.
  How to set up more motivational & manageable living & intervention environments.
  
  Sessions 6 & 7:
  Developing Pleasant Daily Rhythms and Mutually Positive Human Relations
  Social Aspects of Autism & Mutual Relationship Problems. How to establish well-balanced parenting strategies.
  Create clearer work-vs-recreation events using structured visual transition schedules that work to free us from chaos and upsets.
  
  Sessions 8 & 9:
  Developing Clear Communication Systems and FUNctional Curriculum Plans
  Mental Aspects of Autism, its Mutual Communication Binds, and their Effects on Learning
  How to develop independent functional work systems and individualized work tasks and recreational activities
  with spontaneous expressive systems across home, school and community contexts.
  
  Session 10:
  Overview of our "ADAPT" Model & Review of the "OPEN" Autism Assessment Strategy For Consensus.
  Demonstrations of complete and comprehensive structured systems visual work and recreation materials.
  Begin ongoing practical planning for your structured intervention programs across home-school-community.
  

"How do I know if this is the right training for me and my family/my school program/my workplace?"
The simplest answer is a question: "Are you having to live, work, and cope with people, of any age or stage of development who must also live, work and cope with having Autism/Aspergers as they learn and work to reach their fullest potentials? If the answer is yes, then you can feel sure that this series was designed for you and can meet those needs. However, the second more critical question is: "Do you want to use a developmental approach in your Autism program design and planning?" If yes, then this is a program that may be well-matched for you. To learn more about this choice and your options uou can go back to our homepage to the "INFLUENCE" column to help you find resources to help you make that decision. Our L-E-A-P training can help new/novice providers with this initial choice process as well. While THRESHOLD provides advanced training in a certain model we support family-centered options for choice from all well-established best practice models.

"How can I feel I am choosing the best approach for my child/family/students/programs?"
Having a sure feeling that you are doing the right thing cannot come until you choose at least one best Autism practice strategy and commit to using it consistently. You can get this in our L>E>A>P > C-A-L-M groups while you figure out which foundational model you will commit to long term. Therefore, feeling sure about "best" practice training for any provider is the one that will let us become most ready, able, and willing to use it carefully, caringly and consistently. This is because Autism provider experience and meta-analytic research consistently shows that well-established Autism intervention models, when applied across settings, for 25-40 hours per week year round, will work for most children and adults with Autism (although intensive behavioral programs seek an very early age range to produce the most optimum outcomes for selected candidates within the moderate to mild Autism spectrum end). Therefore, it is actually the matching of our adult provider needs, wants, and expectations to a model that will determine how well our program go for our children and strudents. Therefore, it is important for family and service providers to be matched up to the models that work best for them first, from all our available options. Then both providers and people with Autism will have more and higher quality programs available across home, school, and community settings, particularly if we provide programs as family-centered and selected program options.

Our developmental systems trainings for adult providers are all based on a decade of trainee's feedback and ongoing outcome tracking. In each training group there are open options for mutual feedback and negotiations of how to approach our A.D.A.P.T model work. This has helped us continually improve and evaluate the program in terms of optimum outcomes and how to counsel folks on provider to model matching--by supporting all family centered best Autism practice options, as a best practice, instead of just our own.

The providers who have benefited the most from this training were adults who had done the orientation group work needed to let them commit to this model before they began training in it. They were also more flexible, open, creative, and maturing individuals who felt they needed a safer private space to define our shared problems and seek improved individualized solutions. They are usually interested in their own and other peoples' human development and diversity and who were glad to adapt their own communication and behavior to immediately connect with people with Autism. The providers who selected and used our training long term were usually less interested in finding or having the power to either cure or normalize people with Autism, than they are in optimizing everyone's typical and atypical functional skills in a way that was mutually beneficial. Our graduates are seeking to relate to people with Autism in caring and competent ways, as individuals who belong to our vulnerable and yet, resilient community.

As A.D.A.P.T. training series graduates they are usually now fully prepared to timely notice, accurately name, fully engage, and openly negotiate just how ready, able, and willing those of us with, and without, Autism may be and may become in relation to each other. Our A.D.A.P.T. graduate soon find that they can work to begin to overcome most of the mutual binds of Autism Spectrum Disorders and that the person with Autism can now fully participate in reaching for their fullest potentials. For those who have continued in learning and applying developmental model, we get reports of very high rates of satisfaction and levels of realization of human developmental potentials.

---