Journey Learning Center

This facility offers year-round services for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in a school like setting. The purpose of the center is to provide children with ASD the skills to participate in mainstream schooling, which allows them to be more successful in society generally. Treatment is customized to each child’s individual needs and includes Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy, which is considered the gold standard by medical professionals in the behavioral treatment of autism. In addition, Journey Learning Center offers extensive speech and occupational therapy by offering an extremely low staff to child ratio, with individualized programs overseen by qualified therapy professionals.

What differentiates the Journey Learning Center from similar autism centers is their focus on cost containment for affected families. Typical costs of intensive, daily therapy is upwards of $50,000 a year. Clearly, costs of this magnitude are entirely prohibitive for the vast majority of people on average income. Mary Villareal, who founded and operates the center, is committed to keeping costs for each participating family as low as possible. Even with this philosophy, the reality is costs exceed $2300 a month for full time therapy (40 hours a week). Families who support this level of commitment consistently see improvements and results in their children attending the center. The center is a non-profit 501c3 organization and currently relies on both fees and donations.

The aim of MAXimum Chances is to provide scholarships or offset costs to families who cannot afford the intensive therapy as well as potentially offsetting the baseline operating costs of the center.