SUMMARY KEYWORDS

child, skill, social skills, teaching, piece, social, behavior, peers, important, play, master, hangout, goal, tolerate, subjectivity, kids, developing, learner, aba, justina

SPEAKERS

Dana Jonson, Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),

 

Dana Jonson  00:09

Okay, welcome back to Special Ed on special ed. I am your host Dana Jonson, thank you so much for joining me today we have a great episode ahead. I am here with Justina Balzar.Justina is a BCBA. And she’s one of the cofounders of the hangout spot which we will explain all to you right after we play my disclaimer, which you all know has to go first. The information in this podcast is provided for general informational and entertainment purposes only, and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction at the time you’re listening. Nothing in this episode create an attorney client relationship, nor is it legal advice. Do not act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included and accessible through this episode without seeking appropriate legal or other professional advice on particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer or service provider licensed in your state country or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction.  Okay. Hi, Justina, thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing today? I’m doing great. 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  00:59

I’m very excited to be here. Thank you for having me.  Thanks for coming. I think last time we spoke you and Megan a just opened the hangout spot in the middle of a pandemic, and global closings. And I predicted that you guys would be really, really successful because we needed it. And it turns out you were and you’re opening another spot. So why I have you on today is I would love to talk about your approach to social skills as a as a BCBA, as a board certified behavior analyst. And I’ll have you explain a little bit about what that is. But why you’re doing social skills. And I should start by saying the hangout spot is a science back Social Skills Center. So that’s what you get Development Center is that social skills development center. So you guys are working on social skills, and you’ve just opened a new practice called the play space for younger children for ages birth to four, so I want to talk about that. But from an attorney and a parent perspective, when I go into IEP meetings, and we talk about social skills, sometimes it’s a speech and language person who’s providing the services, sometimes it’s a school psychologist, sometimes it’s a special ed teacher. And when I hear BCBA, sometimes my head goes straight to autism. And that’s just my background and training. And that’s not accurate. So what I would love is for you to explain, for everyone listening, from a BCBAs perspective, what’s the magic that you guys do? Because we are seeing that with these students who go in and out of your program. So let’s talk about social skills development from a behavioral component, and go.  So I’m not first of all, I’m not surprised that the first thing that comes into your mind, just as I’ve encountered it, it happens to go into other practitioners minds, and either even families minds who’ve been exposed to Ada, that it’s really very narrow in terms of that exposure and understanding of that scope. And it primarily people associated, especially in the education system with behavior intervention plans, discrete trial instruction, and just a BCBA, supporting in the consultation model in a school, which certainly is one aspect of it. And also, like you said, pigeonholed to autism, but the science of ADA is really just the science of learning and behavior, and we all behave and we are all capable of learning. Therefore, you can really teach any skill using the science of ABA. Really what it is, is a series of teaching methodologies that you can utilize right in simple layman’s terms, to meet someone where they’re at, and to assist them with the learning process of whatever it is they need to learn. Typically, in our world in ABA, behavior, analysts shy away from social skills. And actually, quite frankly, lots of people shy away from social skills, because they’re very nuanced. And they’re very hard to objectively define and narrow down and really identify what’s going to be the most meaningful thing that we could teach a learner or a child, a teenager or adult, what have you, that will really impact their world in a really positive way to help them develop those reciprocal relationships. And there’s a lot of curriculum out there, right on social, yes, and a lot of it is very cookie cutter. So there’s many many amazing aspects to all the curriculum that’s out there. However, if you’re just using a standard curriculum, you’re not really looking at what those individual social needs are for a particular learner. And that’s the first area where we can really miss the mark because we’re if we’re in not teaching what is impacting a child’s inability to make relationships in the day to day, and we’re just pulling bits and pieces from the curriculum, it’s not meaningful, it’s not helping them change those behaviors to help them improve those relationships. Right? So it’s a boss. And then the other area where we find that thing we have a tendency to fall short is when people just teach kids the rules of what to dothe rules of what’s right. And so kids become very, very good at memorizing the rules, talking about the rules, and maybe even applying them to hypothetical scenarios, right. But then when it comes to actually doing those things in the moment, they’re not able to, to utilize those skills, right, that they quote, unquote, have. And the reasoning behind that is because knowing something and talking about it, and I’m using quotes, which no one will be able to see and do something, right, actually using a skill are actually two different skill sets. So I can be a little bit of French, right, and, but I have to think about it when I’m talking it. But if I were to talk with a fluent French speaker, I get really stuck, I can theoretically tell you how to ride a skateboard. But if I were to get on a skateboard, I would probably fall and break a bone. Right? So practice is key. And what we do at the hangout spot, and what we do at the play space is we look to meet children where they are. So we identify in real life, what is that thing that’s keeping them from developing those relationships? That’s the skill that we’re going to teach. And how do we create opportunities for them to practice that, so they get really, really good at it, right? So practice is the missing link between knowing and doing you can’t say that you know how to play the piano, if you can play Mary Had a Little Lamb. But if you know how to, you know, play something more complex, you’re going to really have to practice repeatedly before you get really good at that. That’s called fluency. So we teach through playing games. On the surface when kids come in here, and that’s our goal is for them to come and have a place where they can have fun, they can meet other peers, and have their interests passions incorporated into the learning. Because when that happens, that’s where the magic happens. That’s more open to working on the hard stuff. 

 

Dana Jonson  07:33

I love that you say that you bring up a couple of things that I think are really important. First, the subjectivity of it, which I I love. When I was in graduate school, we had an exercise where they played a video of a student. And we were to take the data on, I’m gonna say vocalizations, I can’t remember what the piece was, let’s say vocalizations. And that was a description. Right? So after it, then we were asked to each say, what was our tally, and none of us had the same tally. And the reason was, as they explained to us, we all defined vocalization in our head differently. And so we were all looking for something different. And so on that level of subjectivity, you know, I go into meetings, and I’ll see in the paperwork, you know, had a meltdown. And I’m saying, what does that look like? What’s a meltdown for this kid, because I’ve got five children, and each of them have meltdowns, and they are all different, like all of them. So what does that look like? So I love that you brought up the subjectivity, because I find that, you know, that is a problem we run into with social skills a lot in my practice, and in my world, too, because I have a child with nonverbal learning disability, that is a key piece that that I think, is really important for us to remember that even if you think about going to a friend’s house for dinner that just had a different family than yours, and the food was different, or the utensils were different, or whatever it was, that was unusual for you and you had to stop and think and navigate. That’s like, you know, a kid who doesn’t understand social cues. That’s what they’re doing all the time. Right. So, 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  09:12

yeah

 

Dana Jonson  09:12

So how do you address that subjectivity? How do you guys in the hangout spot address it? I know what the other thing was, I wanted to ask you, though, before we move on to that, sorry, was you talked about meeting the child where they are at, and that’s another piece, it’s so important. And I think that with social skills, a lot of time we assume a certain level of knowledge before we start teaching them, you know, so we’re expecting the student to understand certain things. So how do you as a practitioner, figure out where your child is at? Because if you figure out the wrong place, then whatever you’re doing isn’t going to be productive. 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  09:51

Right. So I think a couple of things I think the process is fluid, right? It’s a process of discovery so ever you as you get to know each time as you’re learning more and more about them, right, I think the most powerful way to really find out what those most impactful barriers are, that serve as future learning opportunities is really just to observe, what is the child look like in a social setting, are they moving towards the group and maybe trying to initiate but they’re being disruptive or rude or unkind, right? So then they don’t know how to initiate attention for appropriately, they have social motivation, because they’re going up to a group, but they’re not successful. So you could potentially target that is a child playing games with a set of peers. And then anytime the child falls behind, or loses, they have a huge, huge meltdown, right. And then as a result of that kids don’t want to play with them anymore, then there’s the barrier that can be taught around. So how to tolerate losing How to Use good sportsmanship, you can objectively define a goal around those barriers that you observe. And I think in order to make it most meaningful, what you’re looking for in your observation is what are the ones that are occurring most frequently, because those are the ones that are most impactful and need to be supported around. And then you start from there, right, then you create opportunities for practice through play. 

 

Dana Jonson  11:20

So you guys just seen a lot of success with this for your three to 22. population, I think it’s three to 22, because that’s what the IDEA says, provides special education for students between the ages of three and up to the age of 22. And that’s in under the IDEA. But I believe, and I just want to point out that even if a child has graduated from high school, if they require social skills, you guys still take them, right? You don’t have to be in high school in order to get them that is just a number of sort of arbitrary, but not arbitrarily, but chosen by the law that you guys are, are in a public school. So you’re not saying okay, no, you’ve graduated from high school, you can’t come, it goes through 22.  Let’s talk about that younger population, that birth to four. And what led you to decide to open that separate piece, because from three or four through 22, you’re mostly school age for most of that time. So I would presume that the skill sets you’re learning and working on would be different than as an infant to four, I’m just guessing.

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  12:28

So they’re, they’re more scaled up and more complex. So the reason we ended up opening the play space was really from this desire and need to support learners before they hit that school age. So research indicates that kids between the ages of birth to three to five years old, are like sponges, and they are developing lots of new connections. And their brain is just developing really quickly, their bodies are developing really quickly as they’re growing. And they’re really able to pick up on a lot of skills, which serves as a great opportunity to lay that foundation or lead before kids hit school age. So they have some of those foundational skills going into kindergarten, and then are have a greater chance of being more successful socially. But then also academically, when we think about the jump from from preschool to kindergarten, the expectations of sitting at a table waiting for longer periods of time, more structured, academic based demands, they increased significantly. And if a child doesn’t have or hasn’t met certain milestones, and doesn’t have certain foundational skills, what ends up happening because they enter kindergarten, and they’re not ready, maybe they don’t have emotional regulation skills, maybe they don’t know how to tolerate no or waiting or transitions, what have you. And that then presents itself as behavioral challenges. And when that goes when those skills go on taught for a long period of time, and that child develops that history of responding with behavior with whatever problem behavior that they’re trying to communicate their needs with, it become takes longer to then undo and teach. 

 

Dana Jonson  14:28

And that’s an important piece is what you’re saying is because that behavior is them communicating to you. That’s the important piece, because I think a lot of times as adults, we get so irritated by the behavior or, you know, frustrated with the behavior that we forget, that’s their form of communication, they are behaving that way because they don’t have the language to express us or maybe they have expressed it to us and we’ve ignored them because we don’t think it’s important for whatever reason, and I’m guilty of that too. You know when you your child falls and you’re like, it doesn’t hurt. Well, maybe it does. Yeah. Oh, like I get that, you know, coming from that as as an adult. So yeah, that can be that’s got to be overwhelming. And also, I think the anxiety around those social pieces would probably be even more so at a young age, because we’re really all the skills we’re looking for from them at that age are social, aren’t they? Man, I’m just trying to think to what everything I thought I needed to look for in my children. And I mean, at no point it too, was I wondering, I wonder if she has pre reading skills like that was not what I was talking about. I was like, does she make eye contact? If she talked to people? Does she wave does she let you know? So those are all social pieces. 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  15:47

They are their social and their communication pieces. And their foundational. So if you don’t have those going into school is going to be very, very difficult, right? You don’t have the foundational route the groundwork, right? 

 

Dana Jonson  16:00

And sitting in your seat is a social skill, right? I mean, isn’t that to a degree, if if you’re in a situation where sitting in your seat is appropriate, then that would be considered a social skill? Right? 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  16:11

That’s the waiting would be a social skill. Right? 

 

Dana Jonson  16:14

That’s a great Oh, that’s a good way to put it. Okay. 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  16:16

Wait, waiting, tolerating know, is a social skill, right? When you’re interacting with peers? Sometimes here’s how, you no, can you handle that peers are a lot more unpredictable than adults are. Adults are more understanding they’re, they’re more patient, they really try to figure out what your wants and needs are peers move very, very quickly, right. So kids who don’t have those foundational skills, get into an environment with peers who do and those peers are moving very quickly. And, and they’re not waiting for those kids to respond, right. They’re not waiting for those kids to initiate, they’re just moving on right to where they can be successful. And the reality is, we’re all social beings, from the moment that we’re born, right? I mean, a baby cries and that cry is a form of communication right? There. They’re trying to communicate, they’re hungry, they’re trying to communicate, they need cuddles or a diaper change, whatever that is, and, and if we, as a child develops, from birth to one to two to three, right, there’s certain communicative and social markers that need to be hit. And when those aren’t hit, that’s when those things will compound over time. If they’re not taught explicitly, every child develops at a different rate, right? Some kids learn to read by the time they’re two or three, well, two might be an exaggeration. Some children learn how to read does everybody need to learn by by the time they’re three? No, right? There’s exceptions to every single rule. But there are basic foundational markers that are really important to hit. And if we’re noticing that they’re not being that, then it’s really a critical time to be able to intervene and to support and the way to do that. And the way to teach that is through play. Because that’s how children learn, especially at those ages, children are exploring their environment through play, and we can embed lots of opportunities for practice that way and support them and model the skills they need, and to be able to use to succeed. So it’s really something we’re very passionate about. Because we’ve seen in working in public schools, we’ve often seen too many kids that come into kindergarten, from preschool, and who don’t have the skills aren’t, don’t have things like tolerating, no accepting, waiting, transitioning, and how to get a peers attention to even recognize or show interest in peers. And then they’re thrown into an environment that doesn’t allow them to work on that, because that environment focuses on academics, and that it gets exacerbated further and further and further. And you, you potentially, you know, have a child who’s in third or fourth grade, who has behavioral challenges and misunderstood and is lacking a lot of skills. And we’re racking our brains trying to do every possible evaluation under the sun to try and figure out what’s going on. 

 

Dana Jonson  16:16

But and I think that’s a great one, because you’ll hear I’ll hear, you know, well, he’s a little quirky, he likes to be by himself, he likes to, you know, whatever. And then suddenly, in third grade, the child’s have behavior problem. And it doesn’t dawn on anyone that maybe this child was being quiet and a loner, because they couldn’t navigate right social environment, and at younger ages, kids are kinder and, you know, tolerate parallel play a lot longer. I think a lot of children who are not engaging in parallel play will tolerate parallel play. So it looks like they’re interacting, right so your child who’s not who’s parallel playing the other kid doesn’t mind right, they’re doing their own thing that like you, do you it looks like a social interaction. But it’s, it’s not a social interaction.

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  20:06

Totally hear you kids have to move through the different stages not only of communication, but also play. And, and in parallel play, you need to be able to tolerate having a peer in proximity, right. But you can be able to develop those skills to get into more complex forms of play, like associative and cooperative, where you’re actually commenting and interacting more directly with your peers. 

 

Dana Jonson  20:28

And I could see somebody going straight from and skipping that tolerating the peers in your space part, because the kids having behaviors, and now we’re teaching them to cooperate, but we never taught them to tolerate the people in it, right, 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  20:42

they’re not ready for it. 

 

Dana Jonson  20:44

So they’re not there yet. So that’s where I see the skip sometimes when I get involved is, you know, I see that we’re working on skills that aren’t going anywhere, because they’re like three steps ahead of where the child might be. And we have to break it down even farther. And that’s where I find the challenges typically with parents when I’m when I’m representing a client, or even with my own children, where I see the goals and objectives. And while they’re more on the student, sometimes, that’s always difficult, because it’s like the student will do this. But again, I’ve clearly not had enough coffee, because I totally lost my train of thought, again. Last night, I was presenting, and I lost my train of thought twice in the middle of a sentence, and I was live. And I was just like, so that’s over.

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  21:32

I think I know where you’re going with the thing that I see as an indication that a goal is too high for a child, particularly in IEPs, when I’m looking at social goals, is when and this is rampid. Regardless of whether or not we’re talking about social goals, academic speech, right? You have, I see it everywhere. But particularly since we’re on the topic of social and social goals, when I see a goal phrased as the child will master this with X number of prompts, that raises a flag to me. And the reason that that raises a flag to me is for two reasons, actually. So the one being if someone has to follow you around and provide you a verbal prompt, you have not mastered that skill, you can only demonstrate that when you have a body cueing you on what to say and when to say it, which is concerning, because that’s not the definition of mastery. And then why are we then taking that skill off the child’s practice list when they don’t actually have it? The second concern that I have is, if we have goals that have prompting built into it, and we get that, well, they’re just not going to master it out in a year. The question I have is why, because if you can’t make progress on a skill in a year, to me, that indicates that the skill we’re targeting is either not meaningful, or it’s too high for the learner. And we should be picking something that the child can actually master with over the course of a year to attendance, and not with someone verbally prompting them or visually cueing them, right. Unless the plan is for the child to have someone following them around for the rest of their lives. That’s not really successful. 

 

Dana Jonson  23:26

I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna take that little piece of what you just said and play it at all my IEP meetings now if that’s okay. Now, it just sounds so simple when you say it, it that it’s ridiculous, we don’t follow it. But it’s absolutely true. If the child cannot master this in a year with independence, how is it a goal? How is it an objective, right? Because these are supposed to be annual goals. They’re short term objectives. And I do understand learning certain levels of a skill first, but I liked the way you said that, you know, if they’re not ready to learn this independently, the maybe there’s a smaller piece of that skill that they can get independently that maybe we’re trying to teach too many skills at the same time. 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  24:13

Yeah. 

 

Dana Jonson  24:14

And I go back to like, way back when when I’d be teaching students how to, like brush their teeth or something. Maybe I’m just teaching them to pick up the toothbrush. Right? That might be the only thing I’m teaching them to do at the beginning. I’m not teaching them how to put toothpaste on it, you know. So I see that I’m just I’m processing it as you’re saying it because it sounds like yeah, you’re right. Absolutely. If they can’t wait a year, it shouldn’t be an objective. Why am I even contemplating this?

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  24:41

We don’t want goals that are too easy that are going to be mastered on within a month, if we can openly say well, they’re not going to master this in a year to independence. Why is that even being considered?

 

Dana Jonson  24:52

So let me ask you a question because I have a question on this. So if you have a skill, let’s say brushing teeth, okay. So let’s say we’re brushing teeth, and we’re gonna break it down to picking up the toothbrush, right? That’s the first step. And then the second step is going to be picking up the toothbrush and putting it under the water. Right. So the second step is to put it under the water. What’s the objective? Do you have two separate objectives? Both of which would be masters, but you’re only working on a second one after you’ve mastered the first one? Or is there a different way to write that so that it’s longer? Did that make sense? 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  25:27

Yeah. So I think I understand what you’re saying, I think what you can do is have an overarching goal, and then that goal, be separated out into objectives and each objective is a step, and you have to master step one, before you move on to teaching the second objective. And the third objective, what I think is important is that we only put in the number of objectives under an overarching goal that we feel a child can master out in a year. And what that’s going to look like for each child is very different, right? I can’t imagine a child wouldn’t be able to master out brushing their teeth in a year. If they can’t, then the question is, are they practicing? Is someone showing them how to do it? A year is a really long time to master a skill of brushing teeth? Or is there something else happening perhaps physiologically, where the child’s doesn’t have like the ability to pinch and grasp? You know, pinch it hold a toothbrush? Right? Like that’s a whole separate skill if if a pinch, or do those like motor movements, then we shouldn’t even be teaching skills that require that because that’s a prerequisite skill to be able to do any of that. Right. So I think it really depends on the child. But I think the biggest point is to make sure we’re we’re picking a goal, right and get to independence and breaking down only the steps that we’re going to be working on that we feel are doable within a year, and then working on one mastering it out moving on to the next on to the next and then the whole goal is mastered. 

 

Dana Jonson  26:52

Got it. Yeah. So that I mean, because sometimes I do see that where I see goals that are maybe really or objectives that are super short term. And so they master them really fast. They do see that sometimes where pieces are broken out, but they don’t necessarily make sense, because they’re just random pieces of the skill as opposed to going in a specific order. What do you feel a BCBA has that say, a school psychologist or special ed teacher does not have that makes them more equipped to design this kind of program for a child? 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  27:27

The great questions, so I think potentially, as long as there’s a mechanism for collecting and monitoring data, other practitioners can be trained or can learn to support learners, effectively, I think the piece that’s missing often is we don’t have a way of regularly taking, collecting, measuring, and analyzing data on progress. And that can really skew our ability to really understand whether a child is making progress, being able to effectively look at our teaching methodologies and whether or not those are helpful or not, and they need to change. And that’s what data helps us to do. You know, from a BCBA perspective as BCBAs we have the unique ability and understanding of of behavior and different teaching strategies and to be able to enhance motivation and really break thing. 

 

Dana Jonson  28:37

It’s all scientifically backed, right? It’s all scientifically backed, right.

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  28:43

But there’s, there’s an immense amount of value from a multidisciplinary collaboration. There are so many things that as BCBA, we can learn from speech pathologists and OTs and psychologists. Right, I think the bottom line is all fields would benefit from adopting database tracking right on on those, that there? 

 

Dana Jonson  29:06

Well, yeah, my first my first job teaching was at the National Center for Children is all ABA and data driven and all of that. So it’s a little baffling to me when I got out of there and went into a public school. And I was like, what you guys don’t all do this, like, not everybody tracks data this way. What I don’t understand. So I have that background, which has been very helpful for me. But yeah, that is what you’re saying is what I see as well. And one of the challenges I have when we want to do any kind of behavior, social, whatever plan with someone who’s not a BCBA is if you’re a BCBA, I have confidence that you know exactly how to track this behavior and track the data. If you’re not, I don’t know that. That’s just as a professional sitting across the table. I don’t I have competence. I know that you as a principal might tell me that you have a great school psychologist. And they may be, but I don’t know that and there’s nothing in their training that tells me that they would be good at this. Whereas with a BCBA, if you are a board certified behavior analyst is, am I saying it right? I’m getting all my letters messed up today, it’s awful. But if you are a BCBA, I know you’ve had that training. I’ve know you’ve taught that supervision, you know that that practicum time that you have learned how to take this data, and more so than just like one class in graduate school. And so that that, to me is what the big difference is. And in Connecticut anyway, I know that if we were doing a behavior plan for a child of functional behavioral analysis beforehand, if you have autism, it has to be a BCBA. I think right there, we’re talking about how important it is to have that skill set behind you. So it’s not to say this, you said like a multidisciplinary program could be great with the right training and supervision. And so I get that. So I guess, gosh, you’ve given me so much good information. And I’m so happy you guys have now opened another look, well, where are your locations? Let’s go with that. Let’s Where Where are you now?

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  31:11

We have one location. We’re located in Norwalk, Connecticut, right off of Exit 16 on 95. So we’re very, very close to the highway, which is very convenient. And hopefully in the future, we’ll we’ll have some some more location, 

 

31:27

I’m,

 

Dana Jonson  31:27

I’m, I would really appreciate it. If you could open a spot in Danbury, that’ll be very helpful. Stacey, the advocate, my office asked me to make that request of you when we were chatting. So yeah, if you could bring your magic up here. That’d be great. So on it?  Well, and I think it’s also important to know you guys do do assessments, you do work with school districts, you do work with parents, you work with everybody, right? 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  31:54

We here Yes, we do support. We do a lot of collaborations with schools on social, our goal is really to help kids learn not only learn to use the skills that they’re working on with us here, but but more importantly than that, being able to take them and use them everywhere else. Because if they can’t do that, then we haven’t been successful. So you know that our generalization is our ultimate mastery criteria. 

 

Dana Jonson  32:21

generalization is good, that’s important. I always say that. I’m like, Well, I’m thrilled that they’re doing this properly in the resource room, but they’re not going to live there forever. So where else? Are they going to do it? So I think that’s great. So for people listening, who are like, Oh, my God, how have I not found the hangout spot yet? Or the play space? Where can they find it? And where can they find you? Absolutely. So they can go to our website, www dot the hangout spot llc.com. And for anyone who’s interested in learning more about our intake process, or about our programs, um, you can submit an inquiry there, you can also submit an application as well. Or we can also be reached via email at Hello at anything else that llc.com or by phone, our number here is 203-354-9257.  That’s amazing. And I will have all of that in the show notes. So if you’re driving and you weren’t able to commit all that to memory, just go back and check the show notes and they will all be there. Thank you, Justina so much for joining me today. I know that you will be back at another point. But thank you, and thank you for everything you’re doing for our community because we really had a hole in in our need for this, this kind of social skills development programming. And so it’s been really, really great in Connecticut. So thank you. 

 

Justyna Balzar, M.Ed. BCBA LBA (CT),  33:45

Thank you for having me. It’s it’s been such a privilege to be able to work with so many incredible families.

 

Dana Jonson  33:52

Thank you so much for joining me today. Please don’t forget to follow this podcast so you don’t miss any new episodes and leave a review and you have a chance. If there’s anything you want to hear about or comment on. Please go to my Facebook page special ed on special ed and find me there. I’ll see you next time here on special ed on special ed. Have a fabulous day. The views expressed in this episode are those of the speakers at the time of the recording do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company or even that individual today.