ACNC supports families living with autism from diagnosis through adulthood

We are open during San Francisco shelter-in-place via Zoom and some in-person appointments

JumpStart, Learning to Learn: Our Flagship Program

An intensive week-long 1:1 parent and child coaching program focusing on providing a family with skills to support their child’s learning at home and school, understand their child’s specific learning style and areas of need, as well as psycho-education around on-going services and interventions. Families alternate working 1:1 with behavior, communication, social skills, play, and psycho-educational interventionists.

Neurodevelopmental Assessment Clinic

NDAC is a multidisciplinary assessment clinic focusing on children with known or suspected autism. We may begin by providing ‘medically-necessary’ diagnostic evaluation for ABA eligibility – but our main emphasis, unique to ACNC, is identifying ‘autistic learning styles’ and ‘autistic learning disabilities.’ This model, developed by Dr. Siegel, ACNC’s founder, is used to link our assessment results to designing individualized teaching strategies and teaching materials. NDAC emphasizes care continuity by providing a ‘medical home’ for families living with autism through family revisits as the child moves beyond initial diagnosis and outgrows initial early behavioral and preschool programs. Parents can return annually, or whenever they have new questions.

School and Behavior Consultation Clinic

SBBC is a consultative service that combines a developmental perspective with behavior analysis principles, implementing care continuity by moving beyond just the ‘diagnose and adios’ offered by most autism centers. We do school and home visits, guiding families living with autism in selecting among educational, behavioral, and medical treatment methods, in choosing mainstream versus special education, and when needed prognostically, moving toward a focus on life skills versus academics. Consultants engage to bridge the gap between parents, schools, assessment findings, and a child’s IFSP, IEP, BIP, or IPP. The SBCC provides IEEs for schools, and developmentally-focused IMEs lead by Dr. Siegel, and joined by ACNC clinical psychologists and the fpamed.com group of psychiatrists who specialize in forensic psychiatry, neurology, genetics, or pediatrics.

LaunchPad: Getting Ready for Adult Years

LaunchPad provides families and adults with in-depth testing and consultation to support more successful navigation of key transitions in life and education. This includes guidance on post-secondary education, job-sampling, job-training, and leaving home to beginning adult programs or live independently. We recommend meeting as early as age 11-13 to begin to plan the next 10 years of education and development of adult goals based on learning trajectory in the first 10 years of life.