For over a year, Jennie Marble, Director of JCFS Integrated Pediatric Therapies (IPT), has been cultivating a relationship with program staff from Ruth & Norman Rales Jewish Family Services (JFS) in Boca Raton, Florida.

SibShops is a program designed to provide siblings of children with special needs their own place to share common joys and concerns. JCFS Chicago uses the SibShop model, created by Don Meyer of the Sibling Support Project.

“My son is so medically complex that I had him in a bubble,” Evelyn, the mother of and Early Intervention client shared. “But as time went on, I realized what a blessing Early Intervention was. It wasn’t just therapy for him, it was therapy for me.”

Safety is a critical concern for families who have children whose communication may not be understood by everyone. The most constructive way to face these concerns is to have a safety plan in place that is updated and addressed on a regular basis.

Clothes shopping is part of the back to school season. Major retailers have introduced new, inclusive clothing lines designed to help solve some of the dressing challenges that parents of children with special needs face. 

Paris recently joined our team 10 months ago as a Foster Care Case Manager.  She has worked in other related fields where she saw kids with special needs misrepresented and underserved and decided to make a career change to better support children and teens. 

With speech and language disorders ranking among the most common disabilities in children, parents and caregivers are encouraged to learn the signs—and seek an evaluation—if they have concerns about their child’s ability to communicate. JCFS Chicago’s speech-language pathologists can offer timely guidance for families because May is recognized nationally as Better Hearing & Speech Month.

As the prevalence and understanding of Autism Spectrum and Social Communication Disorders has grown, families have become inundated with treatment models and approaches that are being touted as the next best thing.  Camp Firefly recognizes that many evidence-based, effective approaches do exist, and appreciates the benefits that each has to offer.  However, in order to meet the needs of our campers, we have found that the Social Thinking ® approach developed by Michelle Garcia Winner has proven to be the most appropriate for our recreative camp therapy model.

Through play, children develop motor coordination, social skills, emotional regulation, as well as learn how to process the sensory input in their environment.  The occupational therapists at JCFS Chicago’s Integrated Pediatric Therapies and Therapeutic Day School make sure each child has fun at work!

Second-Step, a curriculum designed to promote social and emotional learning for children is being piloted in some of the Therapeutic Day School (TDS) elementary classrooms. While academic instruction is a key component of our program, fostering emotional growth is also crucial to learning.