Community Integration & Adaptive Support
We meet families in the real world—the grocery store, the coffee shop, the hiking trail—where an individual moves, learns, and engages every day. With an apraxia-informed approach, we focus on coaching movement, supporting regulation, and building strategies that make real-life tasks easier.
We recognize that motor skills, motor planning, socialization, leisure, and adaptive functioning are most accurately assessed—and most effectively strengthened—in the natural environments where they are required for daily living. That’s why we use a community-centered approach.
Because motor execution, regulation, and communication demands increase in dynamic environments, support delivered in the community enables a holistic view of motor control, real-time support during task initiation and sequencing, and direct strategies targeting barriers to independence and functional participation in daily life.
Skills gained in the environments where they are used show stronger carryover, and person centered activities often increase fulfilled engagement, communication, and motor intentionality. Working in the community allows us to support movement and participation as it unfolds, while building confidence, autonomy, and a sense of belonging.
We focus on motor planning (praxis) and intentional motor control for community integration, social participation, and vocational participation.
This work supports quality of life, personal growth, and the skills needed for a fulfilling and inclusive life that autistic and apraxic individuals have too often been denied the opportunity to experience.
By situating experiences within natural contexts, we can support sensorimotor processing as it happens, scaffold regulation demands responsively, and cultivate skills that generalize beyond the four walls of a clinic, into lived experience.
“Every autistic and apraxic individual deserves support that makes daily life feel more accessible, connected, and fulfilling.”
An Integrative, Movement-Centered Approach
Daily life calls for rapid sensory processing, flexible motor sequencing, social interpretation, and navigation of unpredictable environments. These demands cannot be fully replicated in clinic-based sessions. At Sunrise Therapies, we provide a unique and highly individualized approach grounded in movement science, whole-body apraxia understanding, environment-based practice, and functional life skills.
Our work centers on areas essential to daily living, including:
community navigation and integration
environmental sensory processing and reslience
multi-step motor planning, sequencing, and initiation
communication supported through movement organization
instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs)
recreation and leisure exploration
social participation and relational engagement
vocational readiness and contribution opportunities
Support is shaped by the individual’s strengths, interests, nervous system capacity, and long-term goals — building not only motor skills, but fostering a sense of belonging, agency, and identity through meaningful participation.
What Sets Us Apart
What makes this service truly distinctive is the combination of apraxia-informed movement support and community-based practice. These two elements are rarely offered together, yet when integrated, they create a bridge between learning a skill and using it meaningfully. We support intentional motor initiation, improved sequencing and follow-through, and more reliable access to movement for communication and self-expression. When the nervous system feels supported and safe, participation becomes more successful — and life opportunities expand.
Growth happens within the environments where skills naturally unfold — parks, grocery stores, community programs, appointments, and daily routines — creating space for connection, exploration, communication, and regulation in context.
Why Community Integration is so Beneficial to Apraxic Individuals
Development of motor planning and intentional motor control cannot be fully understood without considering the environment in which movement is required. Real-world settings introduce variables that influence performance: sensory input, unexpected stimuli, social demands, navigation requirements, and shifting motor plans. When these elements are only addressed in controlled spaces, skill transfer is limited.
Community-based work allows us to:
Observe motor patterns under authentic sensory conditions
Support movement initiation during real tasks and transitions
Cultivate communication through real time interactions
Build adaptive strategies that transfer across settings
Strengthen regulation capacity in varied sensory environments
Monitor skill carryover across everyday routines
Support the nervous system without removing real-life context
By practicing within the environments where participation is expected, we reduce the gap between ability and functional access, leading to more consistent engagement across settings.
