Marcello’s family struggled for years to safely care for him at their home in California. They turned to Bancroft’s residential program for children living with profound autism, Lindens, with the goal of stabilizing his behaviors and improving his ability to communicate. Today, he’s thriving.
“When you have a child with severe autism, with aggression issues, you can’t do anything that a typical family does. You can try and we tried. We really tried. We tried as hard as we could to make it work. But it was just untenable. The situation was untenable.” – David Marciano, Marcello’s Father
Marcello’s home state wanted to place him in a lockdown facility, but his parents refused. Instead, they turned to the Lindens Neurobehavioral Program at Bancroft for help.
“Once we identified the treatment goal of reducing aggression, all of our disciplines came together and we developed an individualized plan to target his behaviors and throughout his stay here, his behavior stabilized,” said Nicole Schwartz, PsyD, Sr. Clinical Director of Linden’s.
“For Bancroft to have reduced his levels of aggression. That’s amazing,” said David.
Lindens is a residential program for children. When Marcello aged out of children’s autism services, Bancroft found a new home for him at Bancroft’s Lakeside Program, a residential program for adults with profound autism. With around-the-clock support and an integrated treatment team of expert clinicians and support staff, he has direct access to Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) services, healthcare services, day programs and more at the sprawling southern New Jersey campus.
“ [And] both his mom and I really wanted him to be here at Lakeside,” said David. “This is the best possible scenario that my son can be in where he’s at today.”
