OUR VILLAGE

We believe we have created this special, safe place at Our Village. Our Village is designed to be a “Social Learning Community,” that helps insulate kids, teens and young adults against bullying, social isolation, and social rejection. At the same time, our programs help improve their self-confidence in their social and friendship skills with others. Our mission is to help children, teenagers, and young adults with social challenges that may stem from autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression, or any social challenges through evidence-based social skills groups, that offer exceptional quality for families.

We provide programs that follow research-based behavioral therapy and play therapy methodologies. Our models currently utilized include: The Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) for Teenagers and Young Adults, Sibshops for Siblings of a brother or sister with a special need ages 4-17, and components of Integrated Play Groups (IPG)© and Peer Mediated Social Skills Group for Children ages 4-12.

PEERS® is the only available evidence-based social skills program for adolescents with ASD, and is used clinically for youth with ADHD, anxiety, depression and other social challenges. It is a 14- week evidenced based social skills group designed for motivated teens and young adults who are interested in learning skills to make and keep friends.

We also provide internship and potential job opportunities for young adults who have experienced social difficulties by partnering with local agencies.

Our Village is led by highly experienced and trained professionals in the field who have and are concurrently working in clinic, home, and school based services. Backgrounds included a licensed clinical psychologist, marriage and family therapists (MFT), board certified behavior analysts (BCBA), registered play therapists, credentialed school psychologist, and credentialed general education teacher. Other staff have experience or training as behavior technicians, special education teacher, MFT interns or trainees, clinical psychology interns, school psychology interns, or social work interns. Our executive board includes a member with an events background, to assist us with the extremely important issues of fundraising and marketing.

Our group leaders running PEERS are trained and certificated, and we are always looking for on-going professional development opportunities to stay abreast of the most current research and information in the field.

Lastly, we strive to have our community advisory board consist of members who reflect a variety of perspectives, as well as stakeholders from our community. Members include parents of children with autism, young adults and teens with autism, leaders from local agencies providing ABA support, and professions such as physician, psychologist, and occupational therapist.

Since our establishment in 2015, we have seen steady growth in our ability to provide services, as evidenced by our ability to financially sustain Our Village and support more families. For example: As of January 2019, we were able to secure our own office space, which has made a tremendous difference in our ability to provide our programs. In the first 2-3 years, we provided two PEERS groups twice a year; now, we have been able to run five groups three times a year in both Redondo Beach and Long Beach locations. This has been due in part to our vendorization with Harbor Regional Center and courtesy vendored with Westside Regional Center.

We hope to continue to work with UCLA in learning and delivering evidence-based programs to kids, teens and young adults including Naturalistic Developmental Behavior Interventions for parents, children and mentors (e.g. JASPER).