DFWCfA's Walden Replication program, known as the Texas Star Academy, is the only program in Texas to provide a fully inclusive preschool program in which ABA treatment intervention can be embedded. This inclusion aspect enables our treatment providers to emphasize language usage, socialization, and appropriate engagement all throughout the child's day. These skill areas are the most important to be targeting first, in the early years! Young children with autism have deficits in their ability to communicate and learn from others in the natural environment. Therefore, with the emphasis on the acquisition of these skills, they can begin to acquire new skills with much less systematic intervention.

Because the literature also states that an effective intervention should consist of 25-40 hours per week, DFWCfA does not offer a part time onsite program. Parents can access additional treatment hours either via parent training and in-home implementation, or through outreach in-home support. It is nationally recommended best practice that parents and all other caregivers be involved in a child's intervention goals and procedures, to ensure implementation is carried over into that child's other daily settings in their home and community. Parents and the treatment staff may also choose to have an additional set of goals that are targeted specifically in these other environments. Combining the onsite treatment with Outreach and parent training, the children with autism should receive an adequate amount of well-ballanced treatment to see the true progress desired in those targeted areas.

The DFWCFA incorporates "Incidental Teaching" techniques and is a Certified Replication of the successful ABA-based Walden Preschool Program at Emory University (McGee, Morrier, & Daly, 1999). This integration of treatment and teaching has been shown to lead to greater generalization of skills across settings and individuals. The Walden Model heavily relies on incorporating typically developing peers into the social settings. With careful planning and implementation, these peers become the cues that that trigger more communicative and social behavior, which helps the children with autism form natural friendships!