- Business: 863-324-1998
- Email: info@connectingpiecesautism.com
- Clinical hours Monday-Friday 9:00-6:00p.m
Connecting Pieces Autism Center (CPAC) is like no other. We offer our students a safe, fun, and nurturing inclusive environment, including classroom settings that foster learning, exploration, and safe sensory experiences for children across the spectrum.
Connecting Pieces Autism Center (CPAC) believes learning should be fun as we offer a variety of learning pathways to meet the needs of the students. We are committed to providing therapeutic and educational services along with practical strategies for improving our students in areas to meet developmental milestones such as gross motor, fine motor, language, cognitive, social-emotional, and behavior modification. Our services are proven scientific therapies customized to assist our students in becoming well-rounded individuals.
We are committed to meeting the needs of our community by providing the utmost quality care that our CPAC team will offer. Every child learns differently and at their own pace. Therefore, we offer 1:1 individualized, and group services focusing on students’ strengths and needs to become highly functional in their daily lives.
Here at CPAC, we aim to embrace our clients’ unique talents, qualities, and potential to help them become well-rounded individuals. We seek to make the CPAC location in Polk County the most respected autism center. CPAC empowers both children and our dedicated staff to exceed their potential.
We aim to embrace our clients’ unique talents, qualities, and potential to help them become world-rounded citizens.
Dearest Williams is a talented and accomplished educator and advocate for children. She developed her skills and passion for caring for children when she took a leap of faith and started a career as a daycare owner for 17 years. As her daycare grew, she pursued the passion to care for children with special needs.
Dearest understood it was imperative to have the education behind the passion to operate and give exemplary care. She received her Bachelor of Science at Shaw University, majoring in Communication Science and Disorders. Dearest went on to earn her master’s degree at Liberty University in special education with a concentration in autism disorder. Then, she received her Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis from the University of Cincinnati. She has worked with children, including children with special needs, for three decades and has been an active practitioner in Applied Behavior Analysis since 2018. She has worked with individuals who lack functional life skills (e.g., tying a shoe, brushing teeth), communication skills (e.g., making requests, explaining how you feel), social skills (e.g., Properly greeting others, appropriate play), maladaptive behaviors such as (e.g., self-harm, aggression, avoidance, anger).
In recent years, after COVID-19, there has been an increase in children diagnosed with Autism, but minimum “full-day clinical/preschool centers” that specialize in accommodating children with special needs. Having the quality of commitment and compassion working with children and empathizing with parents who needed the care, the passion propelled Dearest to push Connecting Pieces Autism into existence to service children with Autism and other spectrum disorders (ASD). As of today, Dearest continues to provide ABA services and attend various workshops and training to further her knowledge and education in special needs services.
CPAC’s team is a combination of clinical and non-clinical professionals such as Special Education instructors, Registered Behavior Technicians (RBTs), Board Certified Behavior Analysts (BCBAs), Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analysts (BCaBAs)
Connecting Pieces Autism Center ABA-team members obtain and maintain nationally recognized board certification through the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB).
