In 2001, while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in psychology
at Purdue University, I took on a part-time job as an
ABA therapist with a family. This was my first experience
working with a child with autism and changed my life.
In the spring of 2004, I was accepted to the Indiana
University to pursue a Master of Social Work degree
with a plan to work in the school setting counseling
children with various emotional challenges. In the meantime,
another child with autism came into my life. I began
working as an ABA therapist with this family while in
graduate school.
In 2005, this family stumbled upon an intervention called
RDI®. The family made the decision to begin the program
with a Certified Consultant, but kept their ABA therapists
on board. I was willing to learn all that I could to
help this child and welcomed the change. It did not
take long to see the amazing transformation RDI® made
in the child’s life. I immediately knew that this is
what I supposed to do.
In 2006, I graduated and began working as a school social
worker. I continued to work as an RDI® extender for
two years, until I made the leap to become a RDI® Consultant.
It was not a difficult decision. In 2006, I began the
process of starting, The Hope Source, Inc. I attended
my beginning and intermediate seminars in January of
2007.
In July 2008, I became the first Certified Consultant
in Indiana. The Hope Source, Inc. has been serving families
for three strong years, offering the RDI® Program to
those in our state and surrounding areas. We work very
hard to educate families, educators, and professionals
on the program. Recently, we have opened the Center
for Dynamic Minds - a RDI®-based, “school” for children
with home RDI® Programs.
I look forward to growing the RDI community in Indiana,
Ohio, and Kentucky while I continue work with the most
dedicated families I have ever met. I am grateful for
the opportunity to serve you.
I recently joined The Hope Source after five years of
work in the field of speech therapy. I began my career
on the Acute Rehabilitation Unit working with brain
injuries caused by stroke, motor vehicle accidents and
other various traumas. After about a year and a half,
I moved to outpatient pediatrics, where I quickly found
myself with a caseload of over 75% children with ASD
diagnoses.
After many years of a multidisciplinary team approach
to treatment, I felt that something was still missing
from my practice and researched many different remediation
approaches before finally deciding to pursue RDI. I
felt that RDI combined what I found to be so effective
on the Acute Rehab Unit, targeting the development of
neural pathways in heirarchy of functional development,
with everything I knew about child development and communication
from a speech pathology standpoint...and more importantly,
filled in the missing peice of the puzzle: parent-child
relationship building.
For the first time I started seeing carryover from the
clinic to the home environment and happy, empowered
parents! In the time that I have spent working with
children with ASD diagnoses, I have never seem a more
comprehensive program that finally allows parents to
be parents!
