Virginia Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities

Christy Harrison: Care Connection for Children

Children and youth with special health care needs CYSHCN provides leadership to the Care Connection for Children (CCC) network across the state of Virginia. CCC supports families and children ages birth to 21 years old who have permanent or semi permanent special health care needs which stems from a diagnosed physical medical need. I chose this project because I wanted to learn more about CYSHCN, how the CCC supports families across the state, and how parents can access these services. As a part of my project, I worked with Marcus Allen and his CCC team, facilitating discussions and supporting the finalization of the scoring of their new intake assessment tool. The purpose of the assessment tool is to support CCC case managers in determining and providing the necessary level of care to meet the family and child's individual needs. Case managers across the state will be able to use this tool while ensuring consistency within the program.

Care Connection for Children Presentation

Rebecca Stickler: Learn the Signs: Act Early, Research and Learning

I researched, reviewed, compiled information about how parents and caregivers look for information about the development of their children, participated with stakeholders of Early Childhood systems to discuss how the Learn the Signs Act Early materials can reach families of young children throughout Virginia, and learned with stakeholders how systems are caring for young children across Virginia. I chose my project to familiarize myself with Early Childhood systems impacting families and hope my involvement will raise awareness of how families access developmental information, inform systems to provide a variety of materials to meet diverse needs, and that Early Childhood systems can better screen babies and toddlers early so those who need it can get services through programs like Early Intervention to catch up developmentally with their peers by the time they enter kindergarten.

Learn the Signs Act Early Research & Learning Presentation

Taylor Vowell: Recruiting Spanish-Speaking Employees for Early Intervention Services

My initial desire was to find a way to bridge the gap between administration, direct service providers, and families in early intervention settings. I connected with Richmond Behavioral Health Authority's Early Intervention services, and they shared that they have struggled with finding Spanish-speaking or bilingual staff members, and their agency primarily serves Spanish-speaking families.

Why I chose this leadership project: Many families I have worked with in the past have needed more support from an administrative level, whether it be ensuring an agency is following company policies or direct service providers getting the support they need from upper management in order to ensure families get information they need. Many times, it is difficult to assist a family who needs more support in response to a systemic issue such as lack of Spanish-speaking staff on hand or a gap in company policies.

The impact I hope I will achieve: I hope that by meeting with the LCSW on staff at RBHA and HR to share information on recruiting tips would assist the agency in hiring and retaining more bilingual staff members. This agency serves 400+ families with children with disabilities, with most of them being Spanish-speaking, and they currently only have 2 multilingual staff members on hand.

Recruiting Spanish-Speaking Employees for Early Intervention Services PPT

Caterina LaRocca: Sex Education and the Role of Occupational Therapy

This product was designed during my clinical experience for OT school last fall. My clinical site was at a school for kids with multiple and complex disabilities. This school did not teach them sex education and there were several instances that arose, that I felt was appropriate for additional education and intervention to occur however it was not "allowed." I created this powerpoint and presented it to an interdisciplinary team to provide a rationalization of why it was important to teach sex education and ways to teach it within the rules of the school system. I feel passionate that sex education is not about sex, that it is about safety. This theme is highlighted throughout the presentation and this approach helps teachers and other professionals see the role that they can play in empowering their students to make safe decisions. I hope that this impacts children and their families by reducing rates of victimization across the lifespan.

Sex Education And Occupational Therapy's Role Presentation

Lucy Timmins: Resources for Executive Functioning

My name is Lucy Timmins (occupational therapy class of 2024), and my leadership project involved creating a website with various interventions, take-home resources, and parent resources to support children with executive functioning. I selected this project knowing about the issue facing children with disabilities who experience a service cliff when they transition out of high school which presents unique challenges as the tasks that adolescents are expected to complete become more difficult as they age, especially tasks requiring increased executive functioning. I developed various resources with written instructions through partnership with the Virginia Treatment Center for Children and then compiled them into a free, accessible website to expand tools available to therapists and families when working with transition-aged youth with disabilities.

Holden Allen: Turning a Page for the Future: Language Supports and Shared-Readings

The purpose of this project was to investigate the types of language support strategies used by caregivers of children with and without disabilities during shared readings and to identify strengths and weaknesses of caregiver reading behaviors used for supporting language development. A quantitative survey using snowball and convenience sampling was utilized for the collection of data. Respondents completed the study’s survey and indicated typical reading practices as well as language supports used (e.g., wh-questions, phonological awareness prompts, expansion, generalization, etc.). Demographic data, class position, and education background were also collected. Results indicated that caregivers possessed an acute awareness of the importance of reading for a child’s development. While caregivers did use a number of language support strategies, more complex and involved strategies were used less frequently. Language support strategies used during reading that were less supportive of language development were implemented more frequently than strategies that were more supportive of language. Based on the findings of this project’s survey, a resource website containing information packets for parents was created. Resource packets on the website include language supportive strategies, shared reading exercises, and commentary on neurodiversity and its relation to developmental expectations.

Turning a Page for the Future One Pager

Danielle Toone: Language Supportive Strategies for Preschool Educators

This project was created as a webinar for preschool educators. After watching this webinar, preschool educators will know about what language supportive strategies are, be provided examples of each language supportive strategy and how they can use them in their classroom. This video will be provided to the Andy Taylor Center (a preschool in Farmville, VA). I created an additional “quick guide” for preschool educators to have handy with simple definitions of each language supportive strategy.

Language Supportive Strategies for Preschool Educators Presentation

Emily Covington: Oral Care, Oral Stim, and the Mealtime Relationship

This project is designed for caregivers of infants with non-oral means of nutrition, but can be used by caregivers of any infant! When infants don’t receive their nutrition by mouth, caregivers may wonder: how can I set my baby up for success, so that they may eat by mouth one day? And the answer to that question is: build oral skills in other ways - using oral care and oral stimulation! This program also recognizes the fact that many family relationships are built around mealtime together and emphasizes ways to still foster those relationships with infants who receive non-oral nutrition.

Oral Care, Oral Stim, and the Mealtime Relationship - One Pager