PlayDate, Inc.

PlayDate began in April 2007 with 4 students enrolled. We became a non-profit organization in December 2007 in order to keep the tuition cost low and hopefully, in the future, be able to provide scholarships to low-income families and those who have exhausted all other funding sources. The idea was developed by the current executive director and a current board member. Both are Board Certified Behavior Analysts. At that time, all local BCBAs had long waiting lists for families needing services. As a professional, if is difficult to have to tell a family they must wait for help because of a lack of providers. In addition to long wait lists, families also face funding obstacles when seeking services for their child with autism. Implementing high-quality behavior/development programs that are research-based can be very expensive. This is often not a possibility for families. Therefore, PlayDate was developed in order to help ease both of these situations. Our goal was to provide high-quality, research-based, on-going services to families regardless of funding. We have succeeded in being able to offer these services to families currently on waiting lists for consultants. However, there are still families who cannot afford the costs of tuition. We are applying for several grants in the hope of offering scholarships to these students. Currently, we focus on help­ing these chil­dren develop the skills that allow them to nav­i­gate daily inter­ac­tions using research-based and data driven interventions. We do this through group and individual ser­vices pro­vided at home, in our cen­ter, and in the community. The mission of PlayDate Behavioral Interventions is to provide quality services to children with disabilities regardless of financial means while educating the community.