Five services, one plan, one building.
Autism therapy usually breaks at the seams: the ABA clinic in one town, the speech therapist in another, an OT who has never spoken to either. On West University Drive they share a hallway, a chart, and one set of goals for your child.
ABA Therapy
The backbone of everything else. A behavior analyst maps where your child actually is, writes goals in the order they need to be learned, and a technician teaches them one-to-one through play. It has the largest evidence base of any autism intervention, and it is the one health plans fund most consistently.
- In our center, weekdays 8:00am–5:00pm
- At your house after school, Monday to Thursday 4:30–6:30pm
- Alongside your child in their own classroom
Speech Therapy
For the child who never stops talking and still can't ask for help, and for the child with no words yet. Sounds, sentences, comprehension, gestures and signs, picture systems and speech devices, and, where an SLP on our team is trained for it, eating and swallowing.
- Goals written into the same plan as ABA, not a separate silo
- Communication devices and picture systems for pre-verbal children
- Feeding and swallowing support where a therapist is trained for it
Occupational Therapy
The therapy that targets the ordinary business of being a child: getting dressed, holding a pencil, sitting through a noisy cafeteria, climbing without falling, and noticing what your own body is doing before it boils over.
- Sensory room and equipment on site
- Dressing, eating, hygiene, handwriting, balance
- Naming the sensory cause behind a behavior nobody could explain
Social Skills Classes
Some things can only be practised with other kids in the room. Weekly groups for talking children from kindergarten through eighth grade, in four age bands that move from sharing a toy up to handling criticism from a classmate.
- 45 minutes, once a week, after school
- Small groups sorted by grade band
- Child needs to be verbal and able to sit with a group
Parent & Caregiver Training
Not an optional extra here. It is a condition of enrollment. Whoever is with your child when things go sideways gets taught the same strategies the therapists use, so progress survives the drive home.
- Parents, grandparents, siblings and sitters all welcome
- Handling the behaviors that happen at home, not in a clinic
- Every week, with your child's behavior analyst
Autism Diagnosis
No diagnosis yet? That is the first door, and it is the one that opens insurance funding for everything above. NeuroClarity, the virtual practice Success On The Spectrum works with, sees children from a year and a half old through adulthood and turns the written report around in days rather than months.
How evaluation worksThree settings, because problems don't stay in a clinic.
| Setting | When | Best for | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-center | Mon–Fri 8:00am–5:00pm |
Teaching something genuinely new; children who need distractions stripped away before anything sticks | Quiet one-to-one work in a stateroom first, then the same skill carried into the playroom, social room, art room and mock classroom |
| In-home | Mon–Thu 4:30–6:30pm |
Bedtime, dinner, siblings, leaving the house, the problems that only exist where you live | A technician works with your child in the actual room where it goes wrong, with you there and being coached through it |
| School shadowing | School hours | Children already placed in a mainstream classroom who aren't yet holding their own in one | A technician supports your child and takes data quietly: helping the teacher, who can't stop a lesson to give one child extra help, without turning your child into the kid with the grown-up attached |
Weekend and before or after-care availability varies. Call us for what McKinney has open at the moment, because it changes.
Before you plan on in-home sessions
In-home ABA has conditions attached that center-based therapy doesn't, and we would rather you knew them now than after an assessment.
- You need to be within about 10 miles of the center. Beyond that the travel eats the session.
- An adult has to be present for the whole session, not in the house, in reach. A technician is never alone with your child at your address.
- In-home is not the right setting for aggressive behavior. Those goals are worked on in the center first, where there is a team, space and equipment for them. It isn't a refusal. It's a sequence.
- Mileage fees can apply depending on distance. We tell you the figure before you agree to anything.
We may also travel with you (a grocery store, a mall, a waiting room) when the skill being taught is one that only breaks down in public.
These are national SOS programs, delivered locally
Every service here follows the Success On The Spectrum clinical model. This site covers how it runs in McKinney: hours, process, insurance, the people your child sees. For the network-wide description of each program, the national site is the source.
Not sure which of these your child needs?
Nobody expects you to know. That is what the assessment decides. Tell us what you are seeing and we will tell you what to ask your insurance about.
