The Early Start Denver Model curriculum and teaching practices were developed by Sally Rogers and Geraldine Dawson and their colleagues and are targeted for children ages 14 months through 3 with autism spectrum disorders.  It involves both specified teaching practices and a specified set of skills to be taught.  It can be delivered in any setting, and by a wide number of people, including parents who have learned the teaching method.  It results from a joining together of two intervention approaches, the Denver Model, and Pivotal Response Training (PRT).  The Denver Model was developed to serve children with autism during the toddler and preschool years.  Over the 25 years of the Denver Model, hundred of young children have received ongoing services through the center based preschool, center based and inclusive community preschools, and 1:1 treatment delivery through home teams.

The Early Start Denver Model is an interdisciplinary model, in which early childhood special education, developmental and clinical psychology, applied behavior analysis, speech/language pathology, and occupational therapy, have been core disciplines in developing the intervention.  The program at the UC Davis MIND Institute is directed by Sally J. Rogers, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist, who developed the original Denver Model. The UCDavis team includes developmental, clinical, and educational psychology, speech and language pathology, behavioral analysts, occupational therapy, and graduate and postgraduate trainees. Developmental pediatrics and child psychiatry are also available for consultation. ESDM staff work closely with children’s primary care physicians.

The treatment team is responsible for working with the parents to develop the child’s intervention plan and implementation.  In the first session, the child’s current developmental skills are assessed in order to develop a set of short- term learning objectives for the child, a set of teaching activities for the parent, and data collection systems. The parents are provided with all these materials in a curricular notebook.  The team works directly with the parent each week to implement the identified objectives and monitors the child’s progress on a weekly basis. In order to meet each family’s needs, the team observes and individualizes the intervention each week. In addition, the team reviews the progress data brought by the parents from home each week in order to help problem-solve and provide parents with the skills needed to ensure that the intervention is proceeding appropriately and that the child is progressing as rapidly as possible.

In the Early Start Denver Model, the head of the team functions as a generalist, attending to all aspects of the child's development, seeking disciplinary help as needed, but carrying responsibility for the child's treatment and progress and orchestrating the various aspects of the child's treatment. Parents and the head of the team share responsibilities for all aspects of the team functioning.

Intervention for toddlers happens during playtimes and caretaking times throughout the day. Each individual family assists in determining how their child's current treatment objectives can best be incorporated into family routines.  Activities like meals, bathing, playtime, chores, and family outings can be core learning experiences when they become activities in which to embed children’s objectives. Our goal is for each child to be engaged in targeted joint activity routines involving play and caretaking for at least 20 hours or more each week.  The team works with the parents to identify these targeted hours within the daily life of the child, as well as within the routine of the family.

The parent teaching model described here is meant to be an initial intervention and most families will add additional interventions for their children. The skills being taught in the Early Start Denver Model should help parents use their time at home with their child to maximum advantage. These skills are not meant to replace other kinds of treatment, but rather to accompany other treatments that families might choose for their children.  The skills you will learn here use empirically based methods from applied behavior analysis, communication development, and early childhood development.

Return to: Introduction   |   Continue to: Main Aspects of the Intervention Approach