The DIR®/Floortime™ Player program is
under review and will not be offered in 2011

Program Description: This is an educational program that leads to a Diploma in Floortime Practice. The program focuses on understanding the profiles of various children and how to use Floortime strategies to promote healthy development and address developmental challenges. Starting this year, Floortime Player candidates will complete DIRB during the first year of their Diploma curriculum. The second year will review in depth how to apply Floortime intervention strategies when supporting home and school intensive DIR®/Floortime™ Training Programs.

Eligibility: B.A. level college graduates, graduate students, educational assistants, aides, and others who would like to  assist parents, educators and clinicians by providing additional Floortime sessions  to children needing intensive Floortime sessions as part of their comprehensive home and school program. Candidates applying to the Floortime Player Diploma do not require to have a clinical license or teaching credential but are required to work under the mentoring of a licensed or credentialed professional who has a DIR certificate or is a level III candidate for the DIR Certificate and has an active DIR Tutor.  Preference will be given to Floortime Player candidates who work in an educational setting or agency where they provide Floortime sessions. Parents of children with special needs who have used Floortime are welcome to apply to this program only after they gain experience working with other children in the above settings. 

Floortime Players Program Features: This program will focus on understanding the profiles of various children and how to use Floortime strategies to engage them in a range of activities to support development, including:

• Spontaneous Floortime strategies to support functional developmental capacities for shared attention, regulation, engagement, two way communication, social problem solving and the continuous flow of interactions, creating ideas and building bridges between ideas in symbolic play and conversations
• Semi-structured activities that are recommended for the home and school program of a comprehensive DIR/Floortime intervention.
• Problem-solving approaches to develop reasoning and self-help skills
• Supporting communication and the use of visual and augmentative strategies
• Sensory motor activities indoors and outside to develop regulation, visual-spatial capacities, improve sensory motor and sensory integration capacities, including “sports” activities – playing ball, skating, riding bikes, hiking, etc.
• Play dates at home and at school and community based experiences
• Implementing the recommendations of teachers and therapists

Joint experiences with other Institute programs: Floortime Player participants will attend the model cases and panels, Floortime™ Focus sessions, as well as specific courses focusing on the above within the framework of working in homes and assisting in schools.  

Presentations: This program uses small group discussions of video clips presented by participants. Guidelines will be provided.

• Tutoring Requirement:   Complete 12 hours of individual educational tutoring and participation in team meetings for children who are presented  
• The Floortime Player Diploma is valid only when used under appropriate supervision. 

The DIR®/Floortime™ Training Program is a responsive to the educational needs of its candidates and services needed.  ICDL reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to alter, amend, expand or otherwise modify the requirements for the program, at any time, without notice. The determination as to a candidate's successful completion of the Program requirements will be solely that of ICDL and the DIR®/Floortime™ Training Program.

DIR® is a registered trademark protected under copyright law.

Floortime™ is a registered trademark of the ICDL