The New England Center for Children was founded in 1975 and is located in Southboro, MA, 20 miles west of Boston. The Center's primary mission is to increase the skills of children, adolescents and young adults with autism and other developmental disorders through the use of applied behavior analysis (ABA). Serving over 200 children and young adults from 69 Massachusetts towns and cities, as well as 10 other states and 4 foreign countries, The Center provides comprehensive educational, residential and clinical services in a variety of day and residential treatment programs.
Many of our students, particularly those in our residential programs, display intense, chronic or seriously interfering behaviors including aggression, property destruction, and self-injury. The overriding goal is to help these students decrease their interfering behaviors and increase their ability to function independently. Toward these ends, we provide comprehensive assessment, individualized ABA programming, speech and language training, academic instruction, community-based activities, health care, student employment, adapted physical education, family services and more. A critical component of the success of our programs is the competency of our teachers, all of whom are college graduates. We provide intensive training in basic behavior analytic techniques, and all teachers must pass a graduate-level introductory ABA course during their first months of employment. In addition, we are associated with two university master's degree programs, Simmons College's masters in severe special needs and Northeastern University's masters in applied behavior analysis. Both are 3-year programs with courses taught on site and research projects and master's theses supervised on site by The New England Center personnel.
