Opened in December 2019, the NECC-Clinic in Dubai Healthcare City (DHCC), UAE has quickly become a leader in providing world-class services to the Dubai autism community. Through providing session-based, applied behavior analysis (ABA), and speech and language services to families across all nationalities in DHCC, the Clinic is a clear example of NECC’s overall mission to transform the lives of children with autism across the globe. Still though, despite early success, Clinical Director Kristin Buchanan, MSEd, BCBA, saw the opportunity to increase their local presence and grow to help even more children and families impacted by autism.
“Our main goal with the Clinic is to bring trainings to educators, support to parents, and access to cutting-edge services to our students, and in order to do this on a greater scale, we thought it was crucial to find ways to reach a wider audience and engage our current community in important discussions.”
To accomplish these goals, Buchanan has embraced the role of social media, recently starting an Instagram profile for the Clinic and posting frequently to Facebook. In doing this, the Clinic is making a concerted effort to bring their audience timely, useful content. The “#NECCTuesdayTip” series, for example, is a weekly video featuring one of the Consulting Specialists providing a short tip to parents of children with autism.
Beyond posting to social media, the Clinic has also hosted a number of Zoom meetings for parents and families to discuss different autism-related topics. These meetings, called “NECC Coffee Mornings”, aim to both provide helpful resources and foster a sense of community among the parents of children with autism in DHCC. Topics covered in these meetings have included ensuring success in the home environment, the grief cycle, and transitioning back to school with COVID policies and procedures in place., next week, transitioning back to school with COVID policies and procedures. Altogether, by utilizing social media and entering into active dialogue through Zoom meetings, the Clinic continues to grow their presence and strengthen their role in the Dubai autism community.
About The New England Center for Children
The New England Center for Children® (NECC®) is an award-winning autism education center and research institute. Our community of teachers, researchers, and clinicians have transformed the lives of thousands of children with autism worldwide through education, research, and technology. The Center provides comprehensive services to maximize independence: home-based, day, and residential programs, partner classrooms in public school systems, consulting services, the ACE® ABA Software System (http://www.acenecc.org), teacher professional development, and research on educational best practices.
NECC is committed to staff professional development, partnering with local colleges to provide on-site graduate training and degrees at little to no cost to the NECC teacher. The result is a growing pool of exceptional teachers trained in best-in-class methodologies, whether they continue their careers at NECC or move on to public schools or private agencies. The New England Center for Children is based in Southborough, MA, and operates a center in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Learn more at https://www.necc.org.