Bridges Baked Goods

Kelle Wood Rich

February 5, 2018

CTAC's Bridges Program for older learners opens up coffee and baked goods store.

Clients in the CTAC Bridges Program have been learning the skills necessary to become functionally independent and successful young adults. Many of our clients have individual treatment plans based on Dr. Patrick McGreevy's Essential for Living (EFL) curriculum. This ABA and Verbal Behavior curriculum helps therapists guide their learners' programming to fit each individual child's interests and needs. So far this year, clients have learned to follow recipes to cook delicious homemade muffins and cookies. They have also learned all the steps to making a variety of coffees including setting up the coffee maker, identifying all the different coffee flavors, discriminating between the different sweeteners and milks. When you stop to think about it, this is a huge amount of steps and discriminations we have to make just to have a cup of coffee! 

Clients also practice the social skills of greeting customers, taking orders, learning how to use a real cash register, identifying money and how to give change if necessary.  They are still practicing with staff and CTAC parents as of right now, but when these skills are mastered, they plan on opening to our whole office complex to really generalize those skills. 

In the spring, we plan to start our organic container garden on the back patio to grow our own ingredients to bake. We'll have fresh, organic farm to market goods, keeping up with the current trends!