Youth Counselors provide intensive supervision/ direction for children ages 8-20 with Autism Spectrum Disorders and varying medical, emotional and behavioral challenges.  Services are strength based and designed to increase children's ability to function successfully and safely and are provided in a context of trusting/supportive relationships between children, families and staff.   Specific duties included but not limited to:

·         Assist children in expanding awareness of safety concerns and teaching daily living and community safety skills.

·         Assist children in developing communication skills and/or utilizing communication systems or devices to enable them to express needs and wants with greater independence and effectiveness.

·         Provide 1:1 support and assistance to children with difficulty maintaining behavioral regulation by providing highly structured and consistent routines including routine skills training, recreational and leisure pursuits, and activities that serve as coping skills for children.

·         Complete daily behavioral assessments, complete baselines, implement and document performance on all task-analyzed teaching plans and communicate data to all treatment team members to assure consistency and maximize growth opportunities.

·         Provide opportunities to learn community safety skills by planning goal-directed community trips and activities and including family members to facilitate transfer of learning.

·         Assist children in diminishing frequency of crisis behaviors utilizing Applied Behavior Analysis and Cognitive-Behavioral programming.

·         Maintain calm readiness to perform crisis intervention duties including the use of passive restraint techniques as needed to ensure safety of each child and others.

·         Act as an advocate and representative of the child by sharing observations and data during treatment team meeting to ensure that program plans are appropriate to the needs of the child and are achieving intended outcomes.

·         Ensure that daily individualized schedules are followed and documented and other daily care needs are attended to: bathing, grooming, medication management, mealtimes, room care, clothing care, chores, physical activity, ABA programming, etc.