Where Everyone
has a Voice!

I’m 27 and meet weekly (often virtually) with Erin, one of The Ely Center’s Speech Therapists and job coaches. I have found Erin’s support and guidance to be extremely helpful. I’m early in my career, and for the past two years, I was a teaching intern at an elementary school and did not have Erin’s support, and it showed. I’m a special education teaching assistant in a middle school this year. I can bring my questions to our meetings and process with Erin how I might have better handled certain tricky situations with students and/or staff at my school. Erin has insightful and supportive questions and suggestions for me. She’s also helping me to understand the “big picture” better at my school and how the adults work, what their roles are, and where I might take my observations or questions within our organization, so I feel that I’m learning more broadly instead of just focusing on daily tasks in my job. Also, Erin brings her dog to our virtual meetings, which makes me look forward to our sessions even more!

The Ely Center was the only place I could find that welcomed us immediately and was able to accommodate the varying needs of both boys. Their integrated approach allows for consistent messaging throughout the various therapies (OT, Speech and Language, mental health), and they have truly connected with both my sons and with me. They provide me with parent coaching to help me understand the complexities of their diagnoses and how I can best support them. We have already adjusted services to recognize new milestones (for example, one of my sons can now handle a group social skills class) as well as our specific needs. To my surprise and delight, the staff of The Ely Center has also been in direct communication with the faculty and staff at my boys’ school, advising them on the best ways to support each boy. Both boys are progressing rather quickly, and their transition back to school has been smoother than anticipated. The therapists at The Ely Center have already developed strong and impactful relationships with both of my children and with me. The integrated approach has already proven to be successful and productive.

“The Ely Center has been an amazing resource for my child who has struggled with social-emotional learning since we started in 2021. The administrators, therapists, and staff are not only knowledgeable but also empathetic. Parenting any child, especially exceptional children, is difficult and the Ely center goes above and beyond in creating groups tailored to my child’s needs and my own. We have used many different providers but have stayed with the Ely Center throughout. It is truly a special place where both my child and I have grown together and are learning to navigate the world, whether at school or at home, with better tools, strategies, and a full understanding of our capabilities. I recommend anyone struggling with parenting – neurodiverse or neurotypical children – to join the Ely family and get better equipped to succeed.”

“Raising two kids who have very different needs is hard. When one of my children quickly developed acute anxiety impacting her ability to manage the day-to-day we reached out to the Ely Center to get her and us the support we needed. We quickly realized how valuable her 1:1 Mental Health Counseling sessions are to her and to us as we scaffold and support her in overcoming her anxiety. These challenges impact everyone in the family so when it was suggested and available we enrolled our other child in counseling to help manage the day-to-day of being an older sibling to a sister who demands more support. We’ve seen firsthand how the Ely center is helping us become the parents we want to be to our kids.”

“Raising young children during the Covid pandemic presented unique challenges to my generation of parents, and for our boys, the struggle with social development in their younger years was both evident and beyond my wife’s or my capacity to address. In the three years that we have had our two sons, now aged 5 and 7, attending group social skills sessions at the Ely Center, we have consistently noted steady improvements in their self-awareness, their emotional regulation, and their ability to interpret and respond to verbal and nonverbal cues from others. The breadth of available programming is another benefit of the center: one of our sons has done a year of occupational therapy, during which his handwriting, external coordination, and kinesthetic awareness have improved remarkably. The other has been engaged in mental health counseling for the same period, during which some of his very painful struggles have either eased or lapsed entirely. The staff at the Ely Center are well trained, selected based on both academic knowledge and practical experience and are uniformly exceptional at what they do. For parents who are looking for help managing their children’s mental, physical, or emotional needs, I cannot recommend Ely highly enough.”

“We came to the Ely center to help our 4-year-old son with his challenges communicating in a social setting, attending to instructions, staying in a group, and regulating his emotions. Our son was involved in both individual sessions, social skills groups, and the intensive summer program over a 6-month period. The Ely center staff were able to teach our son ways to stay in a group, follow a plan, take turns, be more aware of his body, communicate his needs more clearly, and calm down so he could attend to others and act less impulsively. They provided help in a considerate, gentle, and fun manner and our son loved attending the center and made a real friend in the group. The staff was diligent in providing clear communication about what happened in sessions and how we could use their strategies at home. Throughout his time at the center, our son showed genuine improvements in his ability to navigate and communicate in social situations as well as strategies to regulate himself in social situations. We are very thankful to the Ely Centre and highly recommend the service.”