HopeCentral Cares Therapy Center

Grantee: HopeCentral
Timeframe: June 2022 – December 2023 | Amount: $15,000

HopeCentral will launch HopeCentral Cares (HCC) in direct response to the lack of secondary services available to families with developmental disabilities, and the disparities in treatment availability for at-risk families. Not only is the system difficult to navigate with demand greatly outweighing supply, but families with low incomes, language barriers or in at-risk situations are particularly vulnerable to falling through the cracks of the therapy system.

HCC builds upon and extends HopeCentral’s existing primary care model which reserves 50% patient capacity for Medicaid families, integrates behavioral health care and features enhanced physician access. HopeCentral Cares’ in-house staff will provide person-centered planning, evaluation, parent training and education, and ABA services. Partner providers will augment this core program with speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and counseling services. HCC differs from existing therapies in that it focuses on time-limited interventions that empower parents and provide a strong foundation for any further specialty therapies that are needed.

HopeCentral Cares will be implemented in phases, beginning with components that are most foundational to the care model: psychological evaluation, patient-centered planning, parent-mediated interventions, and parent education. When the program is fully built out, HopeCentral Cares will employ 10 FTE and provide psychological assessment, patient-centered planning, therapeutic services, and the Parent Education Hub. Therapeutic services will include ABA day treatment, RUBI Parenting Training for disruptive behaviors, and the Hanen Program for expressive language development. The Parent Education Hub will be a web-based source for reliable information on a host of topics related to ASD and other developmental disorders. It will include curated articles, patient handouts, and other resources. It will also serve as a portal for online parenting classes and have a library of previously recorded presentations.