Family Services

Cheeky Raspberries provides evidence-based support to young autistic children in their homes and education settings (daycare, kinder, and primary school). Our Board Certified Behaviour Analyst and highly trained therapists travel to areas in the Geelong, Bellarine, and Surf Coast regions.

At Cheeky Raspberries we teach new skills and behaviours to autistic children in the way they learn best. We teach to have a positive impact on their lives, empowering them now and for their futures.

At Cheeky Raspberries we provide evidence based early intensive behavioural intervention (EIBI) – using applied behaviour analysis (ABA) therapy, overseen by a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst (BCBA). Our highly trained therapists work with your child on their personalised goals, focussing on their specific needs. These usually include communication, attending, behavioural, social, self-care, and academic goals. We also have programs to address behaviours that inhibit learning, which work by increasing desirable behaviours (for example, for a child who throws toys at people, we may teach them to pass toys, throw a ball to a peer outside, ask the other person to pull a funny face, or teach another behaviour – whichever replacement behaviour serves the same purpose for the child in their specific situation, there is no one size fits all!). Programs are highly tailored to your child. Targets are updated weekly, and monthly meetings with the program supervisor, parents/guardians, and therapy team are run, where progress, goals, and programs are constantly reviewed and updated.

Behaviour Training for Key Stakeholders

Theory and in person training are available for all key adults – parents, grandparents, close friends and family members, educators, and anyone important to your child. Training is run by our Cheeky Raspberries director Stephanie Berry, MEd (ABA), BCBA, CBA, and fellow parent. Parents and guardians are encouraged to attend all monthly meetings, where you have direct input into goals, specific targets, and teaching strategies for your child.

At Cheeky Raspberries we love when our families get involved, after all, families are with their children the most, and play the most important role in their young child's life!

Theory training for your child’s educators may be provided in conjunction with other key adults, for example, with parent training, to ensure services are the most cost effective. For larger groups of educators, including whole school staff training, we recommend our Professional Development: Behaviour Fundamentals course.

Our Therapists

Our director and Board Certified Behaviour Analyst Stephanie Berry oversees all our learner programs. This includes but is not limited to, assessment and reassessments, individual education plans, program development and program changes, analysing and graphing data, running monthly team meetings, training for key stakeholders, and overseeing the therapists.

Our therapists work one: one with our learners, implementing the programs through play in their learners’ homes and education settings. Each learner is allocated 1 to 3 therapists – depending on the child’s needs. They record session data (so they can focus on their learners, a vast majority of this is recorded in the last 15 minutes of each session). Therapists complete weekly program updates and create new materials as per the program instructions and in line with learner progress. They participate in the monthly team meetings and frequently report to Stephanie with any changes and questions they have. Our therapists are all employees, we do not use contractors. This ensures therapists have a higher level of gold-standard training and experience.

Therapists are given comprehensive theoretical and on the job training with our director (your child’s program supervisor). On the job training is provided monthly (or bi-monthly for therapists working across multiple settings) with each child, consistent with monthly program reviews. This allows therapists to confidently run your child’s individualised programs, advance their skills, and allow the program supervisor to frequently see your child with their educators and family members, to ensure goals and targets are best aligned with your child’s current support requirements.

At Cheeky Raspberries we love to work with kids! We believe all kids can learn, and that learning can be fun!