Social Work
The path to meeting the needs of a young child with medical and developmental concerns can be a difficult one for families. Licensed social workers are available to families as they address the challenges of daily living; assist in identifying and accessing community resources; advocate for families with special concerns; act as a liaison with other community agencies on behalf of families; provide parenting education and guidance; and advance the concept of Family Centered Care through working in partnership with families.
Behavioral Consultation and Intervention
UAMS Kids First aims to equip children enrolled with the social, emotional, and communication skills to succeed at UAMS Kids First, throughout childhood, and into adult life.
Highly trained staff consult with families and the team to assist in addressing the needs of children with challenging behaviors, Autism Spectrum Disorders, or other behavioral needs. Using an evidence-based, functional approach to understanding behavior, our consultants conduct a thorough Functional Behavioral Analysis (FBA) within the group setting and assist the care team in implementing Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS). The child’s family and other team members partner in supporting appropriate behavior consistently across settings while consultants assist developmental and therapy staff in targeting key social-emotional skills and strategies to foster appropriate coping, self-regulation skills, and communication skills.
Our consultants play a key role in developmental programming as well as consultation for challenging behavior, providing evidence-based, behavioral approaches to early intervention not only to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but to all children at Kids First who could benefit from this approach.
In line with cutting-edge research into best practices for young children with or at risk for ASD, our model combines best practice from developmental, early childhood techniques with applied behavioral analytic approaches to provide naturalistic, developmentally appropriate behavioral intervention.