Comprehensive, higher-hour ABA for young children, delivered through play in your Colorado home. Hours set by assessment, not a package.
EIBI is the comprehensive form of ABA therapy for young children, usually under five, delivered at higher weekly hours across many skills at once. Budding Futures provides it in your home, anywhere in Colorado, built on play and your child's assent rather than tabletop drills. Rachel Blackburn, BCBA sets each child's hours by clinical need, not by a package.
Three things: age, breadth, and dose. EIBI starts young, when the brain learns fastest and small gains compound into big trajectories. It works broadly, on communication, play, imitation, daily routines, and early social skills in one coordinated plan instead of one goal at a time. And it runs at comprehensive intensity, typically in the range of 26 to 40 hours a week under the practice guidelines insurers use, though the right number for your child comes from assessment, not the range.
For a toddler, that does not mean a desk and flashcards. Done properly, EIBI at 2 or 3 years old looks like structured play, snack routines, bath time, and books, with teaching folded into all of it. That is naturalistic environment teaching, and it is how we deliver early intervention.
A typical week: your child's RBT comes to your home for daily sessions inside the real routine, morning play, lunch, the park trip if that is your day. Goals come from a VB-MAPP or ABLLS-R assessment and get worked in short, playful reps your child mostly experiences as attention and games. Your child can say no, and we honor it; assent-based care matters most at the ages when a child cannot yet argue. Rachel reviews the program at roughly 20 percent supervision, about four times the BACB minimum, and you get parent coaching from week one, because at this age you are half the intervention.
The honest answer needs an assessment, but the pattern is: recently diagnosed, under five, with delays across several areas, communication, play, imitation, daily skills. That child tends to benefit from the comprehensive model. A child with narrower needs, one behavior, one skill gap, often does better with focused therapy at fewer hours, and we will say so. High hours are a tool, not a virtue: the guideline ranges exist because breadth takes time, not because more is automatically better.
Colorado's timing works in your favor. Health First Colorado covers medically necessary ABA at usually $0 under EPSDT, we are enrolled under Provider Types 83 and 84, and there is no waitlist right now, which matters most at exactly this age. Commercial plans typically run $0 to $500 out of pocket, verified before you start.
| Ages | Typically 18 months to 5 years for EIBI; we serve through 18 |
|---|---|
| Model | Comprehensive ABA across communication, play, social, and daily skills |
| Typical intensity | Guideline range 26 to 40 hours weekly; your child's number set by assessment |
| Setting | Your home, statewide across Colorado |
| Typical cost | Medicaid usually $0; commercial $0 to $500; private pay $2,000 to $8,000 |
| First step | Free consultation, benefits check, then assessment |
EIBI is the top rung of the ABA intensity ladder. See how the levels compare.
It would be, if it were 30 hours of table work. It is not. EIBI hours at this age are woven through play and daily routines, and a good chunk of them are your child doing toddler things with a skilled adult shaping the edges. If a schedule genuinely exceeds what your child can enjoy, the schedule is wrong and we change it.
Soon. The whole logic of EIBI is that early teaching compounds. With no waitlist right now, the timeline for most Colorado families is benefits verification and assessment, not a queue.
Then the plan changes. Hours are revisited at every authorization, and family capacity is a clinical variable, not an inconvenience. A sustainable 20 hours beats an abandoned 35.
She writes and reviews every treatment plan, and supervises the therapists who work in your home.
Read Rachel's profileHe founded Budding Futures and runs the day to day, from a family's first phone call onward.
Read Mark's profileTell us your child's age and what the diagnosis process has looked like so far. We will explain what an assessment would recommend.