Hooray for the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation

Sometimes we get e-mail at ADAPT from people who want to donate to a charity that supports developmental autism programs. There’s a few out there, one organization we like to steer people to is the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation.

The Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation supports the Relate Program offered at Specialized Services for Children and Youth (SSCY), which is housed in the old Christie’s biscuit factory on Notre Dame.

The Relate Program is a Relationship Development Intervention (RDI) therapy which helps parents and their children build stronger communication and relationship skills, thereby making it simpler to work on all the other things a child needs to learn.

To support the Relate Program, the Foundation provides families in the Program with free subscriptions to the online resources the program uses.
The Foundation pays for ongoing professional development for staff of the program, and also supplies toys played with by children when they come in for onsite assessments. The Foundation even supports a library of developmental resources available to parents and community members who want to learn about developmental options.

Resources for the Augmented and Alternative Communication Program – for kids with communication difficulties – are also purchased thanks to the support of the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation.

A new program, called Build You Parenting Toolkit, is also being backed by the Foundation. The program is intended to help parents of higher functioning kids by combining education, hands-on coaching, and a “cooking club.”

Finally, the Leisure in Fun Environments (LIFE) Program is also funded through the CRF, and it offers diverse recreation programs to kids of all ages, with a heavy influence on RDI strategies. An RDI consultant runs the program, but she is supported by a bevy of young volunteers who have been well coached in the basic principles of RDI. Some of those volunteer teens go on to become therapists and teachers themselves.

The Relate Program at SSCY could not run without the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation. The CRF are our unsung heroes.
To find out more about the Relate Program, check out the website of the Children’s Rehabilitation Centre at SSCY. To find out about how to donate to the Children’s Rehabilitation Foundation, visit their site.