Boulder Therapeutic Preschool
The mission of the Preschool Project is to provide early intervention for emotionally disturbed and special needs children ages two and a half to six years old in a therapeutic preschool setting.
The Preschool will offer a protective environment where children can make positive gains across all dimensions of learning and social-emotional development, and foster overall improvement in child and family functioning.
Core services provided by the Preschool:
- Academic, social, and emotional education
- developmental and psychological assessment
- parent education and support
- group milieu, individual and family therapies
- occupational therapy
- speech therapy
- psychiatric consultation
- a structure for coordinating with other agencies involved with children and their families.
Goals
Prepare children emotionally and developmentally for their first year of school.
Empower children to lead lives that do not result in additional intensive mental health treatment or negative interaction with the criminal justice system.
Background
This program derives from our growing understanding of the developing brain, the neurobiology of attachment, and the importance of early interpersonal experience in personality and cognitive development. Recent clinical research demonstrates both the damaging impact of trauma and neglect on the brain as well as the potential for early intervention to repair this damage.
Children who have experienced early trauma or developmental disabilities including autism, Down’s syndrome, and many other disorders can make far more progress if intensive interventions occur between the ages of zero and five. BIPR’s staff stay abreast of the most current brain research and well validated clinical interventions. Our goal is to optimize children’s cognitive, social, and emotional growth and development so that they will be able to succeed in school and in life. We do ongoing program evaluation in an effort to continually improve our services.
Our current program is a collaboration with the Connections Classroom of the First Presbyterian Preschool, a non-denominational, co-operative preschool program. We are experts is treating children with autism, autistic spectrum disorders, reactive attachment disorder, and children who have experienced early trauma including physical and sexual abuse and early medical interventions. Approximately half of the children in the classroom are typically developing children. Special needs children learn essential skills from the modeling typically developing children. Because of the social/emotional skills training in the classroom, parents of typically-developing children have been exceeding pleased with the the skills their children have learned. Academic, social skills, fine and gross motor intervention are taught through a play-based curriculum.
