Services for Individuals and Families
Awareness, Education, and Training
As a student with invisible differences, it is imporant to advocate for yourself to get to support your need to prepare for a productive career. As a family, it is crucial to support a member with one of these neurobehavioral or learning disabilities to have the confidence to instill independence and decrease stress in your children.
"Taking the Giant Leap" Transition to College Workshops
During the 2012-2013 academic year, Center for Companies That Care travelled to 9 different Chicagoland high schools to present an on-site, interactive workshop: "Taking the Giant Leap" Transition to College Workshops. These were designed to prepare high school juniors and seniors with invisible differences and their parents for a smooth transition to college. For more information about these workshops, please visit our Transition to College Workshops page. This year, we are offering these workshops in our office, so that students and parents outside of these school communities have the opportunity to attend.
Direct Support
As family members, you do a wonderful job of providing the necessary support for your children to thrive. Our goal is to ensure every adolescent and young adult with invisible differences will be employable and employed in a fulfilling role matching their interests and abilities. We offer a wide range of programing to help reach this goal. At Center for Companies That Care, we provide a wide range of support to stakeholders and young adults.
PEERS®
Program for the Education and Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS®) is a 14-week, evidence-based, social skills intervention developed at UCLA for teenagers and young adults with neurobehavioral disorders who want to improve their ability to make and keep friends. A parent or another caring adult attends a concurrent, weekly workshop. The program is led by certified professionals. Center for Companies That Care is offering sessions starting this fall, and for more information you can visit our PEERS® page.
Parent Networking and Information Sessions
At our monthly meetings (held on the second Tuesday of each month), parents will have the opportunity to interact with other parents who have children with special needs through networking hearing guest speakers. For information about these networking and information sessions, visit our Parent Networking and Information Sessions page.
Research
We value research as a fundamental strategy because we want to to make every adolescent and young adult in our program be employable and employed in a role matching their interests and abilities. The more we learn about students with invisible differences, the more we can help them complete their education and prepare for productive careers. Our research reveals the scope of the issue and the value of the Invisible Differences program. For more information about our findings, please visit our Invisible Differences Research page.
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Partnerships and Mobilization
5K March to College
Center for Companies That Care hosts its anannual 5K March to College, dedicated to increasing college graduation rates among minorities and students with disabilities. For more information, visit our March to College page.