Center for Autism and Related Disorders - Walnut Creek

"My son has been attending therapy since September 2018. He was 3 1/2 years old when he started and he was attending full-time approximately 30 hours per week. Today he is doing exceptionally well and began attending school full-time in February reducing his hours at CARD to approximately 16 hours per week. At first I was skeptical of the program as I did feel that his behaviors became more challenging but I stuck with the program in hopes that it was going to make a difference in his life. So glad I went with my gut and kept him in this program. My son, now 4 years old, has really made positive progress over the past 6 months and is really doing well both at home and at school. I understand that the parent training and parent practicing may seem like a real pain at times but the meetings actually play a huge part in my sons progress and are invaluable in the learning process for myself as well as everyone on my sons team. Communication is of the most importance when it comes to making positive progress and keeping everyone on the same page moving forward. I know I was skeptical with the way things started out in the beginning and the scheduling was a bit frustrating at first but once we had transitioned into a regular weekly schedule everything began falling into place. I truly feel blessed that my son is able to have this wonderful opportunity and for all of the positive progress he has made this far. The staff at CARD is amazing and I just want to say thank you to everyone for making such a big difference in our lives."

"Zero stars if I could. We attended an initial consult with Caroline and she told us we had to bring our son. So we thought she would observe him, run evaluation etc. Nope. She preached at me for 2 hours about their program, ran no evaluation and then proclaimed that our son needed 30 hours of therapy a week. Ummm no. We'd had a previous provider and he was at 20 and the recommendation was to REDUCE his supports not increase them. She then wrote up a report that was submitted to our insurance company that was completely fabricated and inaccurate. I was so angry I called my insurance company and rebutted the report and ordered them not to pay the bill submitted as the billing was for services that were never rendered! It had a line item of 8 hours of observation of our kiddo - they never observed him 5 minutes! Totally ridiculous. Run away from this company fast. Our insurance company took action and CARD withdrew their bill. They are no longer in network of our insurance company which says a lot."

"The staff at the Walnut Creek location are awesome and a bunch of great people to come to know. Not only do they provide my son's needed therapy, they provide a sense of family, as we all are focused on helping my child and his diagnosis of ASD. I'm glad these people are a part of my son and I's life."

"I agree the parent meetings and practicums are pretty time consuming BUT the idea is to educate the parents and to supervise the children while they are in session with therapist. My only suggestion to this site is that because there are older children /teenagers there that they expand the program to more social interaction in the WORLD. These kids need to move into doing things that are more age appropriate for them to tackle. BUT I also say it is up to parents to pay attention to the signing of services. If you see your child DID not have a session or you are asked for two signatures, be sure to ask WHY? However, I think they need to get MORE therapist so that scheduling issues are not on the regular. My biggest grip is that scheduling of services. So, just as I was writing this note, a cancellation was attempted. The number of therapist is the issue to me. I believe the Supervisor is a good supervisor and really cares for the kids as she helped me during her time as a teacher. She was the ONLY ONE who helped me outside of the school district to get my son services which were in line with his challenges. So it is not about money for her at all .... I just think this office is fairly new in comparison and staffing consistency is a challenge."