The mission of the Autism Care for Toddlers (ACT) Clinics is to improve the lives of families with young children diagnosed with autism through high-quality assessment and intervention services, community engagement, premier educational programs, innovative research and extraordinary patient care.
Since the first opening of the ACT Clinic on 90th and Q Street in 2013, the ACT Clinics have improved the clinical services for families, grown well-trained students and therapists, and contributed to the scientific community by conducting research evaluations for providing evidence-based interventions. The generosity of an angel donor, who is committed to providing care to underserved communities, enabled the expansion of the ACT Clinic to North Omaha (ACTION Clinic at 50th and Ames). Throughout the planning process for expansion, we knew that to live up to our mission and make a meaningful impact, we needed to strengthen our efforts to build collaborative and lasting partnerships with the autism and Omaha communities.
Through these collaborative partnerships, we’ve worked to improve our services and understand the needs of our families and the community by listening, learning and taking action. In order to provide the most comprehensive, high-quality services, we’ve partnered with community members and organizations with the vision and goal to remove barriers and take steps to achieve equity in quality care for neurodiverse children and families.
Some of these efforts include providing educational and training opportunities to young students looking for careers in mental health and early childhood services – with the intention of building a diverse workforce representative of the children and families from the communities we serve.
Additionally, we are soliciting feedback from and supporting community groups who are making efforts to reduce mental health care disparities and educating the community on the needs of neurodiverse Black and brown children.
Finally, we are taking the information and knowledge selflessly shared by our community partners to move beyond just discussions and make changes that will hopefully have a long-term impact.
The therapists and staff of the ACT Clinics are grateful for the time, information and support our collaborative partners, both within MMI and in the broader community, have shared to help guide our efforts in the "right" direction – not the direction we think we should be going but the direction that is informed by what is needed by the community.
As our clinics continue to grow, we hope to better serve the community by increasing accessibility to autism services, sharing our knowledge through education and training opportunities, and expanding and streamlining connections to resources that support families of children with autism.