The Heather Empfield Day School and Transition Center

About the Program

Category: Children and Youth (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

The Heather Empfield Day School and Transition Center Henrico County, VA Population: 280,581 The Heather Empfield Day School and Transition Center is a place where kids who have difficulty functioning in a public school setting can come to learn skills that help them academically, at home, and in the community with the ultimate goal of returning them to public school. Responding to the rising numbers of children with autism, intellectual disabilities and emotional disabilities, the Stafford County, Virginia, Office of Human Services and Stafford County Public Schools partnered to open the school in 2009. The school uses a combination of specially trained teachers, paraprofessionals, behavior support assistants, and therapists to provide students with a highly structured academic program focusing on math and literacy, a personalized sensory treatment, and a vocational program for learning job skills. The program focuses on providing students with the necessary tools to navigate and understand the world around them and potentially enable them to return to their public school classroom and eventually successfully integrate into their local community. Behavioral support and such other specialized services as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and transition assistance are available. The program includes a structured educational learning environment on the elementary and secondary level with social development, behavioral support and modification, and sensory integration with such specific sensory activities as swinging, bouncing, brushing, and rolling that can help students regulate their sensory response to daily environmental and emotional stressors. The school has seen an improvement in literacy, more independence, better communication skills and the ability to interact more successfully with their peers. Students’ attendance was greatly improved while attending the program and disciplinary incidents greatly decreased.