About SCERTS®
The SCERTS® Model (Social Communication, Emotional Regulation and Transactional Support) was developed out of 25 years of research and clinical/educational practice by Dr. Barry Prizant, Dr. Amy Wetherby, Ms. Emily Rubin, and Ms. Amy Laurent, a multidisciplinary team of professionals trained in Communication Disorders, Special Education, Occupational Therapy, and Developmental and Behavioral Psychology. Each team member brought his or her area of expertise to create this educational approach for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and their families. SCERTS® is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to enhancing communication and socioemotional abilities, and for supporting families.
The 2 Volum SCERTS® Model Manual (Brookes Publishing, Inc.) is now available. You can download a PDF by clicking here. The DVD/ 3 Video on the SCERTS® Model is also available for $250 (reg. $279). Email kelly@ccseminars.com to order or download a PDF.
The SCERTS® Model
A framework and guide
Offers a framework to directly address social communication and emotional regulation, the core challenges of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). It focuses on building a child's capacity to communicate with a conventional, symbolic system from preverbal to conversational levels of communication. It also focuses on the development of emotional regulatory (i.e., self and mutual regulatory capacities to regulate attention, arousal and emotional state). Transactional supports are designed and implemented across settings to foster more successful interpersonal interactions and relationships, and more productive learning experiences across school, home and community settings.
Recognizes individual differences in children
Provides an individualized education/treatment approach based on a child's strengths and needs, guided by research on the development of children with and without disabilities.
Family-centered
Takes into account critical individual differences across families in reference to their priorities and lifestyle. Families are collaborative partners in assessment and education/treatment efforts.
Integrated approach
Designed to encourage professionals from different disciplines to collaborate with each other and with families when addressing core challenges and enhancing adaptive skills for children with ASD. It is comprehensive and integrated, representing a new generation of education/treatment approaches.
A practical approach based on years of research, clinical and educational experience
Incorporates educational/treatment strategies derived from empirical research and sound clinical/educational practice. The SCERTS® Model collaborators (B. Prizant, A. Wetherby, E. Rubin, P. Rydell, and A. Laurent) draw from almost 100 years of collective experience and training in a variety of treatment models with children with ASD. Collectively, the SCERTS® "team" has published over 120 articles and chapters in scholarly journals and books, five edited books or quarterly journals, and two assessment instruments.
Focus on functional skills and meaningful outcomes
Progress is measured in functional activities with a variety of partners. Therefore, the broader context of a child's development is recognized, including family involvement, and the absolute necessity for supporting communication and socio-emotional development in everyday activities and routines.
SCERTS®Collaborators
Barry M. Prizant, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Dr. Prizant has more than 25 years experience as a clinical scholar, researcher and program consultant to young children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and related disabilities and their families. He is a licensed Speech-Language Pathologist and holds the Certificate of Clinical Competence (CCC-SLP) of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
He is Director of Childhood Communication Services, an Adjunct Professor in the Center for the Study of Human Development, Brown University, and a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. He has published more than 95 articles and chapters on childhood communication disorders, has given more than 450 seminars and workshops at national and international conferences, and serves as on the Editorial Board of five scholarly journals. He served on the committee on Screening and Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders at the National Institutes of Healh.
He is co-author of the book Autism spectrum disorders: A developmental, transactional perspective and the assessment instrument, the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (both with Dr. Amy Wetherby), and is completing the SCERTS® Model Manual with this colleagues.
Dr. Prizant's current research and clinical interests include identification and family-centered treatment of young children who have or are at-risk for social-communicative difficulties, including Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Amy Wetherby, Ph.D., CCC-SLP
Dr. Wetherby is the Laurel Schendel Professor in the Department of Communication Disorders at Florida State University. She has had over twenty years of clinical experience in the design and implementation of communication programs for children with autism and severe communication impairments and is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Dr. Wetherby's research has focused on communicative and cognitive-social aspects of language problems in children with autism, and more recently, on the early identification of children with communication impairments. She has published extensively on these topics and presents regularly at national conventions. She is a co-author of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (with Barry Prizant). Dr. Wetherby is the Project Director of the FIRST WORDS Project, funded by a U.S. Department of Education Field-Initiated Research Grant and Model Demonstration Grant on early identification of communication disorders in infants and toddlers. She is also the Project Co-Director (with Juliann Woods) of the Early Social Interaction Project funded by a U.S. Department of Education Model Demonstration Grant. She served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee for Educational Interventions for Children with Autism and is the Executive Director of the Florida State University Center for Autism and Related Disabilities.
Emily Rubin, M.S., CCC-SLP
Ms. Rubin is a Speech-Language Pathologist specializing in Autistic Spectrum Disorders and related developmental disabilities. She is an adjunct faculty member and Clinical Instructor at Yale University and currently serves as a member of their Autism and Developmental Disabilities Clinic. As the Director of Communication Crossroads and private practitioner, she provides direct therapeutic services, evaluations, family counseling, and consultations to various educational programs serving children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Her current clinical interests include early identification of social-communication disabilities and the relationship between learning style and later social competence. She is currently licensed in three states including RI, MA, and CT and is a certified member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Amy B. Coggeshall-Laurent, OTR/L
Ms. Laurent is a pediatric Occupational Therapist specializing in the identification and treatment of sensory processing disorders. Working as a private practitioner, she provides evaluations, direct therapeutic services, home programs, and consultations to educational programs for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders and related disabilities and their families.
Her areas of clinical interest include early therapeutic intervention as it relates to the development of arousal regulation abilities and functional skills. Ms. Laurent is currently licensed in RI and MA. She also is certified by the National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy.
SCERTS® Model Publications
For currently available published information about the SCERTS™ Model, see the following:
- Prizant, B., Wetherby, A., Rubin, E., Rydell, P., Laurent, A. and Quinn, J. (2003). THE SCERTS® Model. Special issue of the Jenison Autism Journal (to order, go to www.thegraycenter.org).
- Prizant, B., Wetherby, A., Rubin, E., and Laurent, A. (October, 2003). THE SCERTS® Model: A family-centered, transactional approach to enhancing communication and socioemotional abilities of young children with ASD. Infants and young children. This article on the model can be downloaded for free at http://depts.washington.edu/isei/. Click on IYC Articles and comments.
- Wetherby, A.M., & Prizant, B.M. (Eds.) (2000). Autism spectrum disorders: A developmental, transactional perspective. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes Publishing Company
- Prizant, B., Wetherby, A., & Rydell, P. (2000). Ê Communication intervention issues for children with autism spectrum disorders. In A. Wetherby & B. Prizant (Eds.), Autism spectrum disorders: A transactional developmental perspective (volume 9), Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
- Prizant, B.M., Schuler, A.L. Wetherby, A. M., and Rydell, P. (1997). Enhancing language and communication: Language approaches. In D. Cohen & F. Volkmar (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders (2nd Edition). New York: Wiley.
- Schuler, A.L., Wetherby, A.M. & Prizant, B.M. (1997). Enhancing language and communication: Prelanguage approaches. In D. Cohen & F. Volkmar (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders (2nd Ed.) New York: Wiley
- Wetherby, A. M., Prizant, B.M., & Schuler, A.L. (1997). Enhancing language and communication: Theoretical foundations. In D. Cohen & F. Volkmar (Eds.), Handbook of autism and pervasive developmental disorders (2nd Ed). New York: Wiley.
Click me for a PDF of the SCERTS® Seminar in Speech and Language