ABLE Kids Shows Up

For many families navigating an autism diagnosis, finding the right support system can feel overwhelming.

That’s where ABLE Kids has carved out its place in communities across the Southeast, providing early intervention therapy, resources, and stability for children and parents alike.

At its core, ABLE Kids provides early intervention therapy for children with autism through Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), but what they really offer goes beyond clinical care. For many families, they provide structure, consistency and peace of mind during a time that can feel uncertain and overwhelming.

An autism diagnosis often comes with more questions than answers. Parents are navigating new territory, often while balancing work, childcare and the emotional weight of wanting the very best for their child. Traditional educational and daycare settings are not always equipped to meet those needs.

Showing Up for Families

“Families come in having read a lot of terrible things about ABA online,” Emily said. “And there are bad BCBAs out there. There are bad lawyers, bad doctors, bad professionals in every field. But here, where you’re at, we’re not bad. It’s important to us that our families feel supported.”

You can see it in the way their clinics operate. You can feel it in the consistency of their teams. And if you simply sit in the parking lot for a few minutes, watching families come and go, you start to understand the role they play.

It is not just therapy. It is support, structure, and a sense of possibility when it is needed most.

ABLE Kids operates with a model designed to support both the child and the family, with an approach centers on intensive, full-time care, typically around 40 hours a week, during some of the most critical developmental years. It is a level of support that not only accelerates progress for the child but also provides families with something just as valuable: reliability.

“We rebuilt our program model for early intervention and intensive, 40-hour weeks,” Emily Toburen said. “It helps families to know that they have consistent childcare that actually takes care of your children.” 

That clarity of purpose has fueled significant expansion.

Showing Up for the Community

What began as a smaller network of less than 10 practices five years ago has grown to 26 clinics across the Southeast, with continued development in markets like Columbia, Augusta, Savannah, Atlanta, and Charlotte. Even with that growth, the focus remains intentional.

Originally serving a wide age range under a broader structure, ABLE Kids leadership decided to specialize in early intervention, enabling ABLE Kids to create a more focused, effective environment for both clients and clinicians. It is a shift that has made a meaningful difference in outcomes and in day-to-day experience for their team.

ABLE Kids’ impact extends beyond their clinics. Through outreach efforts, partnerships with local providers and participation in community events like autism acceptance walks and initiatives such as Moms Over Mountains, they are actively working to connect families with resources and build stronger support networks. Backed by their parent company, Vinea Capital, they also contribute to larger philanthropic efforts across the communities they serve.

Showing Up for the Future

There is also a future-oriented arm of the organization taking shape. With the upcoming launch of Agape LLC in Augusta, the team is expanding its philosophy of care into adult disability services, creating a continuum of support that extends well beyond early childhood.

For families just beginning their journey, that kind of long-term thinking matters. Because what families need most is trust. They need to know that the place they are walking into is equipped, compassionate and committed to doing things the right way.

Showing Up for Employees

That ABLE Kids team is built on a robust internal training ecosystem, including ABLE Academy, a partnership with Arizona State University that allows employees to pursue advanced education in ABA and grow into leadership roles like Board Certified Behavior Analysts.

Additionally, as ABLE Kids has grown, maintaining a strong internal culture has been just as important as expanding its clinical footprint. That is where the partnership with Showpony comes in.

Emily and the ABLE Kids team chose to partner with the Showpony team, not just for better products, but a true partner who could bring ideas to the table and create something that felt specific to their people.

“The previous experience just didn’t feel specialized,” Emily shared. “We wanted a partner that would give us something more individualized.”

Through quarterly apparel drops, ABLE Kids celebrates its staff with custom-designed pieces that have quickly become a point of pride.

“We give them new shirts each quarter to celebrate them,” she said. “They’re so soft, so nice, and people are talking about them. I’m literally delivering them while we’re talking and it feels like we’re delivering joy.”

More recently, Showpony helped ABLE Kids take that experience a step further by building custom online shops for their teams. Instead of a one-size-fits-all order, employees could log in, choose their preferred styles, sizes, and colors, and create something that felt personal to them, all while still rolling up into a single, streamlined order for fulfillment.

Within those shops, pieces like Storm Creek Sightseer short and long sleeve performance tees, Charles River Crosswind Quarter Zips, and NuBlend Crewneck Sweatshirts gave employees options that balanced comfort, style, and everyday wearability without ever feeling overly promotional.

Beyond the logistics and design, what has stood out most is the shift in the relationship. Where the previous vendor focused primarily on cost as a shepherd of ABLE Kids’ resources, the experience with Showpony has been rooted in quality and collaboration.

“Working with Showpony has been great,” Emily said. “The quality is there, but more than that, it actually feels like a partnership.”

It is a small extension of a much larger philosophy. Whether it is the care they provide to families or the way they show up for their own team, ABLE Kids continues to build systems that feel intentional, personal and built to last.