The Children & Families Podcast is supported by the Aprednamos Podcast Channel and Aprendamos Family of Services. The producers and hosts are Caroline Zamora and Krystal Chavarria-Gonzalez.
About Aprendamos Family of Services: We are a therapist-run organization that began in July of 2005 to serve children and families’ needs through early intervention. So began Aprendamos Intervention Team. Early Intervention services end at age three. Families came to us with concerns about a lack of resources for their children after the age of three, and so began our Esperanza Children’s Therapy Clinic. Families in our programs also voiced concerns with a profound lack of services for children diagnosed with Autism. So we applied for a NM Department of Health grant to provide ABA therapy to children with Autism. So began our fastest growing program Mariposa Autism Service Center. During this same period, families were seeking mental health services. Families who have children with developmental delays and disabilities often experience higher rates of stress, so we started Alegria Family Counseling Clinic. Following these programs, we recognized the need for two grant opportunities to support our families and programs: the Conscious Fathering Program of Southern New Mexico and Cariño Home Visiting Program.
Over the years, we’re grown from one building with one speech pathologist and family service coordinator to six facilities and 240 employees and subcontractors working every day for the children and families in our communities, through families first and families driven growth.
Today we have teams with speech-language, occupational, physical, and family therapists. We also have a nurse, nutritionist, family services coordinators, developmental instructionists, infant massage therapists, and pediatric specialists. Our mental health clinicians specializing in play therapy interventions, MDMR, Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and more. Our Autism program has 16 Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBA) and about 50 Registered Behavior Therapists (RBT). Our team is growing, we value our A Players and look for each team member’s strengths.