Program Description: The Floortime™ Player Program is a program to educate individuals to provide Floortime™ to children with special needs in either home, center or educational settings where DIR® supervision and liability coverage is provided. This program does not provide education in diagnosis, developmental assessment, program planning, or independent practice.  It does, however, provide education on how to do Floortime™ with different types of children on the autism spectrum or with regulatory disorders with varied profiles.  This includes setting Floortime ™ goals, evaluating progress, working with teams and families, carrying out semi-structured problem solving activities, prescribed sensory-motor activities and small group interactions.  The Floortime™ Player program offers basic and advanced levels, with individual and group tutoring of Floortime™. practice.

Eligibility: B.A. level college graduates, graduate students, educational assistants, aides, and others who provide supervised experiences to children in accredited educational and home intervention settings are invited to apply. Individuals with special experiences can inquire about exceptions.  Parents of children with special needs who have used Floortime™ are welcome to apply to this program only after they gain experience working with other children in the above settings.  Those holding professional credentials or licensing should apply to DIR®B or DIR®C Programs, as applicable.

Priority is given to applicants who have attending ICDL/DIR® Conferences, the Greenspan course, in-service training, or other related presentations. Applicants are expected to have read the basic books on Floortime and be conversant with DIR® concepts. 

Floortime™ Players Program Features: This program will focus on understanding the profiles of various children and how to use Floortime™ strategies to engage them in a range of activities to support development, including:

• Spontaneous Floortime™ strategies to support functional developmental capacities for shared attention, regulation, engagement, two way communication, social problem solving and the continuous flow of interactions, creating ideas and building bridges between ideas in symbolic play and conversations
• Semi-structured activities to learn social interactions and thinking through games, songs and various activities to “run with the crowd!”
• Problem-solving approaches and “work” to develop reasoning and self-help skills
• Supporting communication and the use of visual and augmentative strategies
• Sensory motor activities indoors and outside to develop regulation, visual-spatial capacities, improve sensory motor and sensory integration capacities, including “sports” activities – playing ball, skating, riding bikes, hiking, etc.
• Play dates at home and at school and community based experiences
• Implementing the recommendations of teachers and therapists

Joint experiences with other Institute programs: Floortime™ Player participants will attend the model cases and panels, Floortime™ Focus sessions, as well as specific courses focusing on the above within the framework of working in homes and assisting in schools.  

Presentations: This program uses small group discussions of video clips presented by participants. Guidelines will be provided.

• First Summer – present two brief vignettes and video clips doing Floortime™ with different children.  It is up to the participant to obtain written consent to present the videos .  All identifying information should be removed or disguised. 
• Second Summer - present two additional video clips demonstrating Floortime™ with different children at two points in time.
• Tutoring Requirement:   Complete 12 hours of individual educational tutoring and participation in team meetings for children who are presented  
• The Floortime™ Player Diploma is valid only when used under appropriate supervision.

Tuition:

• Payment must be received within 7 days of acceptance to reserve space

Housing:

Complete meeting package rates include room, all meals and snacks throughout the day. Most special requests can be honored and kosher meals can be arranged. The location of the 2011 Institute is to be announced.

Once accepted, you will be provided further information on how to register. Housing costs are not included in the Institute tuition.

Please understand that the DIR® Institute is a developing program responsive to the educational needs of its candidates. ICDL reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to alter, amend, expand or otherwise modify the requirements for the Program, at any time, without notice. The determination as to a candidate's successful completion of the Program requirements will be solely that of ICDL and the DIR® Institute.