The components of the 12-month Pathways ™ comprehensive program include:

• Pathways ™ Interdisciplinary Evaluation – the interdisciplinary Pathways ™ team provides a two-hour, highly individualized, comprehensive evaluation to determine strengths and challenges of the child within his or her home and community life. Family interviews are utilized to understand the daily life of the child and determine the family’s priorities for intervention. Every family will complete a Pathways ™ Home and Community Life Skills Checklist to quantify baseline performance (or progress) on independence in daily life skills.
• Pathways ™ Annual Plan – The Pathways ™ plan includes short term goals and a long-term vision for adulthood, which are driven by the Pathways ™ Focus Areas. Individualized strategies will be specified to help the family achieve the agreed upon goals.
• Pathways ™ Focus Areas – These are the priority areas for skill-development inspired by the domains within the Charting the Life Course framework. Goals will be developed collaboratively to address the skills within these focus areas, which have been deemed priority by the assessment process and family input.
  • Meaningful Daily Routines (self-care, organization, transitions, flexibility in non-routine situations, scheduling, eating, preparing meals, hygiene, bathing, dressing, laundry, use of lists, visual supports, or video-modeling for independence)
  • Communication & Social Participation (communicating wants and needs, self-regulation, friendships and family relationships, independent leisure activities, inclusion in community activities, use of personal technology, social behaviors in community settings)
  • Productivity Skills (job skills, volunteering, home management, cleaning, money management, technology skills)
  • Healthy Living (physical activity, functional movement, food selection, eating portions, medication routines, healthy sexuality)
  • Safety (emergencies, online safety, understanding consent, understanding boundaries of different types of relationships, communication of personal information, navigating the community)
  • Self-determination and Self-advocacy (making choices, introducing myself, expressing wants and needs, having responsibility, goals and dreams for future)
• Pathways ™ Therapy Sessions – Families will have 5 one-hour long additional therapy sessions beyond the initial evaluation. These sessions will take place in the DSG therapy space at our office in Mission, KS, and will include in-person consultation with the families and hands-on therapeutic activities with the child. One of the therapy sessions will be dedicated to a video review (or a visit from the therapists if scheduling allows) to review the child’s participation or behavior in a home, work, or community activity so the therapists can have a glimpse into the child’s daily life experience in their natural context. Strategies will be provided to the family on how to assist and support the child more effectively in the chosen context.
• Pathways ™ Portal – an online portal provides families with expert reviewed effective resources, skill-specific learning activities, video tutorials, and confidential document sharing to help families navigate the year ahead.
• Pathways ™ Progress Monitoring – the child’s progress will be monitored closely. Families will be provided official documentation, including evaluation reports, the Pathways ™ Plan, a mid-term progress report, and Pathways ™ Growth Report.
  Pathways ™ Growth Report – Families will have a growth assessment at the end of the Pathways ™ year. A report will be provided identifying skill attainment and progression towards goals. We recommend the report be shared with school districts and added to the IEP record.
• Generalization of Pathways ™ goals into DSG group programs – Families will be encouraged to enroll their children and young adults in the age-level group programs available at DSG, including PALS (Peers Actively Learning Skills; 7-11 years old), STARS (Special Teens Achieving Real Success; 12-18 years old), Club 3-2-1 (18+ years old), and the HIRED (Helping Individuals Realize Employment Dreams; 15+ years old) program. The programs above are free or low cost. Pathways ™ participants will have the opportunity to practice their targeted social, behavior, and communication goals in a supportive social setting with same-age peers. Data will be collected to determine progress on skills.