Therapy Programmes

At The Ark Centre we know the importance of early years intervention for children with autism, but we recognise that each child is unique. We believe a treatment programme that is tailored to a child’s specific requirements is the most effective. All children at our centre attend 5 therapy sessions per week and the centre is open to provide therapy for 51 weeks of the year (closed for 1 week at Christmas).

Parents have the option of three different packages of therapy, all of which are run by our experienced, specially trained team of therapists. All packages make use of the principles of ABA.

Multidisciplinary Programme

We recommend a multidisciplinary package for most of the children that join us at The Ark Centre. The package uses a combination of predominantly one-to-one Behaviour Therapy, Occupational Therapy (OT) sessions and Speech and Language Therapy (SLT) sessions. Our Behaviour Therapists run OT and SLT sessions daily in addition to the direct OT and SLT sessions.

Behaviour Therapy Programme ‘Plus One’

For children that do not require a full multidisciplinary programme, we offer a package of behaviour therapy with the choice of either OT or SLT sessions included.

Stand-Alone Behaviour Therapy

This package is suitable for children who may not require either OT or SLT therapy sessions.

We will consult with parents to establish a child’s individual needs to determine which package would be most suitable. Once a package has been selected, our therapists will complete all relevant assessments to establish a baseline and set individual targets for the child’s programme. These targets are reviewed after each therapy session, and we complete full reviews of each child’s programme, with parents, on a half-termly basis.

Please see our individual therapy pages for more details about the treatments included in these packages.

“Our four-year old son attended The Ark Centre for a summer camp in 2015.  We are all very positively impressed by the centre and especially by how quickly the staff there understood in depth our sons abilities and needs.  They were then very flexible in adapting the programme to his particular needs. In his case, his sensory integration difficulties were given priority as we were told that they were keeping him back from making improvement in any area.

We were given a daily programme report and also some helpful tips to improve him at home.  We obviously did not expect miracles out of such a short programme, but we can honestly say we have seen an improvement.  Especially in his focus and initiating social interaction.  Well done to everyone at The Ark Centre for the brilliant work you are doing with these precious kids.  Not only are we determined to continue using your services but we would recommend it anytime to anyone else.  Thanks keep it up! ” – Marvic O’Dwyer