Our Mission

The Social Mind Center’s Mission is to educate, equip, and empower children and teens with the communication, thinking, and self-management skills to navigate the world independently.

Our curriculums focus on social competency, resulting in the development of social skills. Social competence refers to social, emotional, and cognitive skills and behaviors children need for successful social adaptation across environments.

Our focus at SMC is on thinking, not behavior. Thinking drives behavior.  To adapt our behaviors to the social situation, we must have social, emotional, and organized thinking.

We Are Not a Clinic.

We are a Center that is a community sharing knowledge and resources on best practices for communication interventions.

In building a social mind, we teach:

1. Social attention: seeing and intentionally attending to our environments and the people in our daily lives. Becoming aware of oneself and how one interacts with others.

2. Social understanding: understanding our needs and how they impact our interaction with others.

3. Social interpretation: interpreting our environments and reading others’ emotions/thoughts to access the environment's expectations.

4. Social interaction: adapt our words, thoughts, and actions to participate in a meaningful and impactful way in our communities.

Our team has decades of experience with thousands of varying learning profiles of extraordinary children requiring unique coaching and instruction to equip them with social communication skills to succeed across environments.

SMC team Interventions focus on the core skill deficits in ASD, ADD, ADDHD, anxiety, and other social communication weaknesses, such as lack of social understanding (inability to acquire social understanding independent of direct instruction) and building social language & theory of mind (thinking what others are thinking) addressing perspective impairment.

SMC team Intervention plans are customized to the child’s profile and compiled from assessments and observations in varying environments. We value feedback from family, educators, and all involved in the child’s life.

We believe that language is what connects us to the world and others. We believe that the limitations of your language are the limits of your world (Ludwig Wittgenstein).

We believe every child is more than a diagnosis and a sum of their weaknesses.

We believe that communication is a human right.

  • SMC Team Difference

    1. SMC clinical Director Dr. Sandra Savinelli has 30 years experience in social communication intervention.

    2. SMC co-founder Ana Anselma is a parent of two children on the autism spectrum. Each child has an expansive understanding of their autism and are role models for youth. Ana Anselma has a vested personal interest in developing strategies, and tools for all children to succeed.

    3. SMC focuses on the skill profile of the child. Every child has a unique make up of strength and weaknesses.

    4. SMC interventions are focused on equipping the child with skills that encourage self-management that lead to social and emotional self-sufficiency.

    5. SMC team members have exposure, experience and intervention implementation with thousands of varying learning profiles of children with social communication challenges across environments such as school and home.

    6. SMC team members have personal experiences with learning differences.

    7. SMC interventions focus on the source(s) of deficits in ASD and social communication disorders such as lack of social understanding, (inability to acquire social understanding independent of direct instruction) and building social language & theory of mind (thinking what others are thinking) addressing perspective impairment

    8. SMC intervention plans are customized to the child’s profile that is compiled from assessments and observations in varying environments. We value feedback from family, educators and all involved in the child’s life.

    9. SMC focus on equally developing the child’s strength as overcoming weaknesses.

    10. SMC team approachable, knowledgeable and connects intervention goals across the therapies.

    11. SMC is an amazing facility for the whole family.

  • Our Beliefs

    1. We believe that language is what connects us to the world and others. We believe that the limitations of your language are the limits of your world (Ludwig Wittgenstein).

    2. We believe every child is more than a diagnosis and a sum of their weaknesses.

    3. We believe no child wants to fail.

    4. We believe every child should be part of the solution to their own challenges.

    5. We believe every child has a place and purpose in the world and deserves to find it.

    6. We believe every child should be equipped and encouraged to acquire the self-management skills that lead to a healthy, happy and balanced life.

    7. We believe that communication is a fundamental component in connecting with others and building relationships.

    8. We believe that helping children become aware and understanding of the thoughts and feelings that influence behavior is the key to a successful, independent and balanced life.

    9. We believe autism is a different kind of mind that learns and processes information differently therefore requiring corresponding teaching strategies.

    10. We believe that all on the autism spectrum have limitless potential, deserve respect for their individuality, and have a right be instructed, equipped to understand the ways of the neuro-typical world.