About Us
The Christian Sarkine Autism Treatment Center (CSATC) is housed in the Riley Outpatient Center and is affiliated with the Indiana University School of Medicine, Clarian Health Partners, and the Riley Hospital for Children. The Center provides a variety of services including psychopharmacological management, behavioral consultation, counseling, parent training, educational consultation, and social skills training. The HANDS in Autism program was initiated with foundational funding from the Centers for Disease Control and expanded with support from the Indiana Department of Education, Division of Exceptional Learners and the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
The creation of the HANDS program has generally expanded the focus of the CSATC to include a variety of educational and outreach opportunities, including series such as the Make It Take It workshops, Next Steps workshops, and the InfoRM Yourself workshop. However, the core efforts of the HANDS in Autism program have centered on developing and evolving an innovative training model. The HANDS in Autism training model was founded on the belief that training should focus on: (1) student strengths, (2) comprehensive training, (3) the educational process from assessment to goal development, (4) blending strategies based in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) and evidence-based practices, and (5) hands-on work with students with an autism spectrum disorder and with a range of strengths and challenges in functional and academic skills. The training model incorporates best practice teaching strategies by presenting initial information in didactic format followed by trainer modeling, trainee practice, and trainer feedback.
The HANDS program is currently expanding the training model by facilitating the development of collaborative classrooms in existing special education classroom milieus in local districts. These collaborative classrooms follow the same practices and principles inherent in HANDS missions and philosophy of training and intervention and facilitate programming that increases local capacity to educate and train professionals while also building bridges across community systems (e.g., education, medical, home).
For more information about the CSATC, please visit the Center website. The HANDS in Autism program was initiated with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and further expanded with funding through agencies such as the Indiana Department of Education, Division of Exceptional Learners and the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
