Our Mission
Founded in 1998, Somerset Hills
Learning Institute is a private non-profit program that offers a broad spectrum
of services to children, adolescents, and adults with autism. The Institute is a dissemination site
of the Princeton Child Development Institute (PCDI)
and exists to provide science-based treatment and education to people with
autism. Somerset Hills Learning
Institute will prepare professionals as future autism intervention resources in
New Jersey, and through its research, pioneer comprehensive intervention models
that may be used nationally and internationally for the benefit of people with
autism.
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“Because of Somerset Hills Learning Institute, we were able to have our
first real birthday party for our daughter. There were 22 kids in attendance and she fully participated
– laughing, running hand-in-hand, and just having fun with her FRIENDS!”
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Collaboration
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Through the Institute's relationship with Caldwell College, it is now
providing distance-learning opportunities to Caldwell students and its
staff enabling them to remain full-time interventionists at the
Institute while becoming credentialed professionals. The
Distance Learning Project will further the dissemination of effective
autism intervention services to an exponentially increased number of
people with autism throughout New Jersey. Learn more...
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Our Impact
Each day in New Jersey, 33 children are diagnosed with
autism. These diagnoses translate
into a conservative price tag of 165 million tax payer dollars to care for
those children over their lifespans.
Over the first 10 years of Somerset Hills Learning Institute’s
operation, taxpayers paid $9.7 million of the $13 million it cost to deliver
our services. By graduating students back to their public schools we have saved
New Jersey taxpayers more than 5 times their investment – over $50
million.
The return on taxpayer investment will increase
exponentially when the students who complete their educations with Somerset Hills Learning Institute enter into our adult services
program at age 21. There our adult
students with autism will receive job and life-skills training to become
independent, productive, and taxpaying citizens.
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KEVIN J. BROTHERS, Ph.D.
Founding Executive Director
Somerset Hills Learning Institute
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For more than 25 years, Dr. Brothers has delivered science-based, behavior-analytic educational services in both public and private schools to toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults with autism. Dr. Brothers earned a doctorate in Developmental and Child Psychology from the University of Kansas and has served as the school's Executive Director since its inception in 1999. Previous positions include those held at the Princeton Child Development Institute (PCDI), Bancroft, the New Jersey Center for Outreach and Services for the Autism Community (COSAC), Lawrence Kansas Public School District, and as educational consultant to school districts and families.
Dr. Brothers' articles have been published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis and the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities. He co-authored the chapter, The Baer Necessities: Observation, Measurement, and Analysis, published in "A Small Matter of Proof: The Legacy of Donald M. Baer" in 2003.
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