‘A Safe Place for Everyone’ 

There are a few scribbles on the wall, a couple of toys inching out of their cubbies, and a young man in the kitchen shouts “Hi!” several times to a visitor at the Ripple Effects Community Inclusion Center in Portage. Three teens are on swings in the new sensory gym, but things are fairly quiet for the moment — only because the Wave Break respite program for spring break has concluded for the day.   

“When you have a kiddo with special needs, what do you do during spring break?” asks psychologist and Portage resident Jennifer Austin, whose son Caleb, 13, enjoys a range of programs at the nonprofit Inclusion Center. “What do you do over the summer? Your child isn’t necessarily welcome at other places. To be real, sometimes it’s a matter of your child being a little much and not a good fit for those environments.” 

Austin is one of the parents of more than 100 neurodivergent youth and young adults who visit the Inclusion Center each month, appreciating the range of programs at the facility, which was launched in 2024 by board-certified behavior analyst Lauren Cavalli. The center also serves neurodivergent adults of any age. 

Cavalli, 38 and a mother of four, has been involved with the area’s neurodivergent community during her nearly 15 years in the field. She opened the for-profit Ripple Effects Autism Learning Center in South Haven in 2019 and a facility of the same name in Centreville in 2020. 

“When Covid hit, both of those sites doubled in size,” says Cavalli. “I think people became more aware of the services that we offered and the benefits to their local community.” 

Creating a safe space

In 2023, Cavalli added Ripple Effects autism learning centers in Sturgis, Coldwater and Portage. They primarily serve youth ages 1 to 6 who are enrolled in a Michigan Medicaid health plan, and provide Applied Behavior Analysis therapy and caregiver guidance.  

But Cavalli also wanted to offer free programs in an open-to-all community space, so she created the Inclusion Center as a nonprofit. The center takes up a 15,000-square-foot facility at 2255 W. Centre Ave., in Portage, that used to be a day center for adults with dementia. Accessibility was built-in, and the facility even included a salon, which now offers sensory-friendly haircuts.

“As I toured the place, before I signed the lease and before I even had a dream of a nonprofit, I thought about all of the families I’ve met through my work as a behavior analyst and my friendships with other foster and adoptive parents,” says Cavalli. “Sometimes having children with special needs with disruptive behaviors can be isolating. A lot of families don’t always feel welcome at community spaces, and some of them have even been asked not to return to certain spaces, even their churches. 

“I wanted to fill that gap and create a place where everyone feels like they belong. This is a safe place for everyone,” she says, adding that she uses proceeds from her for-profit autism centers to support the nonprofit, which offers free clubs, classes and events alongside some Medicaid-reimbursed programs and services such as  respite care and Community Living Supports, a program that helps neurodivergent clients with independent living skills such as cooking, hygiene, housekeeping and social engagement.   

The Ripple Effects centers employ 65 staff members altogether. Among them is billing specialist Angela Hull, whose son Sam, 13, has known Cavalli since he was 2. 

“He was diagnosed (as neurodivergent) at a year and a half, and Lauren was his first BCBA (board-certified behavior analyst) at another agency,” says Hull. “We fell in love with her and the way she did things. She’s thorough and proactive, and we really appreciated what she did for Samuel.”

Cavalli moved on to another job, and Sam to another service provider, but when Hull learned Cavalli was opening the Inclusion Center, she was “very, very excited.”  

“We started with some of their weekend programs and the monthly Family Fun Night and really appreciated their respite services, where we could bring Sam to play for a couple hours and my husband Bill and I could have some time to ourselves,” says Hull. 

Michele Helner’s son Sammy, 11, was born with a rare and severe form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome, which has led to cognitive and fine and gross motor skills impairment. A sixth-grader at Portage Central Middle School, Sammy comes to the Inclusion Center every day after school with his service dog, Lasso, for Community Living Supports.  

“He loves going there. It’s his favorite place,” says Helner, an elementary school music teacher. “He’s made some friends there and has certain caregivers he just loves hanging out with. One day I came to pick him up, and he said, ‘We made egg salad today.’ Sam has had some eating issues and sensitivities, so I was surprised. When we came home, he said, ‘Mom, we gotta make egg salad.’ And he taught me how to do it.”

Helner has done some teaching at the center herself, training staff on how to react if Sammy has a seizure. “If something happens, I want to make sure everybody knows exactly what to do in an emergency, and I feel very confident that they will be fine,” says Helner. 

Flexibility is key

Administrative specialist Victoria Erwin, who staffs the center’s front desk, made a point to take Helner’s training, in part because flexibility is key to how the center works. 

“We base our care around what parents are looking for. We try to work with families and meet them where they are versus them trying to do things our way,” she says. 

Austin’s family has been a beneficiary of that can-do attitude. 

“We home-school Caleb, and at first it was stressful combining online and in-person experiences,” says Austin. “We mentioned our wish that there was some place for him to be around other home-schooled kids. And then they started the Learning Hub that Caleb goes to twice a week. They help him with his schoolwork and just give him a chance to interact. He just likes being somewhere
where he can just hang out and talk to other people. That may seem like such a simple thing, but this is a kid who, I would say, a year ago didn’t understand the basic things of how to hang out with people.”

The proud mom says that her family was thrilled to have a 13th birthday party for Caleb. 

“That’s something that parents with neurotypical kids take for granted. Without the role Ripple Effects has had in his life, I don’t think that would have happened,” says Austin, adding that she’s been happy to refer adults to the Inclusion Center’s programs, which include conversation and social skills groups and a weekly Sunday morning coffee meetup called NeuroBlend. 

Hull sums up the benefits of the center: “The Inclusion Center definitely provides services that do not exist at other places.”