We have had an exciting year at Floreo. Between our profile in The New York Times, the closing of our $10M Series A funding round, our first partnership with a payer (CareSource), and, most recently, our first full-team get together in DC, we have a lot to be thankful for.

We are proud to announce the closing of our $10M Series A funding round, led by Tenfore Holdings with participation from the Felton Group, the Autism Impact Fund and the Disability Opportunity Fund. 

As the weather in much of the US starts to cool down, things at Floreo are heating up! We have some exciting content in the works, including the next series of lessons we have been developing with the State of Tennessee Department of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities that focus on employment-related skills. We also have some other much-requested lessons in the works and can't wait to announce their release soon. Stay tuned for those announcements as well as some new features that we think our Coaches will love!

It is a great time of year to revisit the Trick-or-Treat lesson with your Learner; keep reading to get a refresher of what you can expect!

Members of our team had a chance to share Floreo at the first fall event for Meta's invite-only #MetaTeacherPopUps series to demonstrate how Floreo can turbocharge special education for the neurodiverse. We were grateful to get to meet so many passionate, innovative educators. Let us know if you plan to be at the Brooklyn pop-up on October 16 or the Naperville, IL pop-up on November 6. We would love to meet you! Special thanks to Meta for the invitation to participate in these fun events.

Marsha Stepensky, MS.Ed, BCBA, is a Content Producer at Floreo. She suggests incorporating self-care into your daily (or more often!) routine and has some ideas to help you do that. Marsha has some suggestions:

Self-Care. It’s hard to escape hearing about it or seeing the hyphenated word plastered on a skin care or health foods window display. Glancing through social media, you would get the impression that self-care equates to a luxurious spa day, a $17 organic acai bowl, or a last minute trip to the Caribbean to “disconnect.”

The reality is self-care does not need to be expensive, extravagant, or time-consuming. We all know the positive benefits in caring for ourselves, we hear people talk about, and we know we should practice it – but actually doing self-care can feel like an exhausting task. Yes indeed, caring for ourselves is more easily said than done. For too often we push self-care to the very end of our to-do list; a to-do list so long, it was probably written by Tolstoy himself. I’m guilty of it too. I own three mindfulness reflection journals and have written nothing in none of them (I ended up converting one of them into a work notebook).

One of the pillars of the Floreo development process is that our clinical team ensures that our lessons are built upon evidence-based practices. With a robust team that includes a neurodevelopmental pediatrician, Speech Language Pathologist, BCBAs, and neurodiverse adults who all contribute to content development, we are committed to having the highest of standards when developing new lessons. For example, our Street Crossing experiences are built around targets as determined by curriculum established by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

We have heard from many customers that our Join a Conversation lesson has been a favorite for both Coaches and Learners alike. Last year, we introduced more topics of conversation and a randomization aspect after hearing from customers that they were tired of talking about pizza -- the only conversation that was then available. We added 10 additional topics of conversation and heard from many that this was a great improvement!

Recently, I was able to visit a true pioneer in serving the autistic community, the Dan Marino Foundation. Founded 30 years ago when autism awareness & acceptance was nothing like today, the Dan Marino Foundation has been ahead of its time, focused on services around independent living and employment as autistic kids become adults and when services start to fall off the cliff. More than that, the Marino Foundation has been on the cutting edge of technology developing novel applications including virtual reality based for areas such as driving instruction and job interviewing.

Have you been wondering if Floreo might be a good fit for your school, practice, or family? We created a short experience to determine if Floreo has lessons to help address challenges your Learner might be experiencing. Click the button below to find out if Floreo is right for you!

We have some exciting new content coming up in the next few weeks; stay tuned for the release announcement!