The Autism Program or TAP is part of a state-wide network of resources for Autism Spectrum Disorders in the state of Illinois and is one of their five Regional Training Centers. It is a joint program of HDFS and the Department of Special Education at UIUC. The TAP Resource Room is housed in HDFS's Family Resiliency Center located in Christopher Hall and provides a place where families and professionals can find information or preview materials that might be helpful to them.
The administrative offices of the Department are headquartered in Bevier Hall. This building erected in 1955 was the first building to be named for a woman, Isabel Bevier, the founder of the program in Household Science in 1900. The building is shared with the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and includes many faculty and graduate student offices, classrooms, the Child Care Resource Service, as well as the Bevier Café and the Spice Box which provide a great place for a meal, snack or just a place to hang out and study.
Child Care Resource Service (CCRS) is a resource and referral service serving parents and providers in Champaign, Douglas, Iroquois, Macon, Piatt, and Vermilion counties in Illinois. It is a program of the University of Illinois in the College of ACES; its home is HDFS and the University of Illinois Extension Service. CCRS helps parents locate available child care and maintains current, detailed information on more than 700 licensed and licensed-exempt centers and family child care providers in east central Illinois.
As a university-based laboratory school with its home in HDFS, the Child Development Laboratory (CDL), directed by Dr. Brent McBride, is charged to provide high quality care to the 160 enrolled children and their families, while at the same time supporting teaching, research and outreach activities of faculty, staff and students on the UIUC campus.
In 2003, a second building, the Early Child Development Laboratory was built for state-of-the-art programming for children from six weeks to three years of age. This building includes specialized research and observational rooms that allow students and faculty to observe children’s growth and development as well as their interactions with caregivers. A specialized room also allows for children to be videotaped for further study.
In 2006, Christopher Hall was erected—the second building on campus to bear the name of a woman! Doris K. Christopher is the founder and chairman of The Pampered Chef ®, Ltd. a Berkshire Hathaway company and the premier direct seller of high-quality kitchen tools sold through in-home demonstrations. A graduate of the University of Illinois, Ms. Christopher wanted to give back to her alma mater and generously donated the funds to build a new building devoted to research and education on issues related to family resiliency—the result was Doris Kelley Christopher Hall. In addition to creating modern offices and classroom space, the building houses the Family Resiliency Center and its Research Home, a unique laboratory which simulates a "real" family home (with observational and video-recording capacity) to facilitate study of family relationships and processes, and The Autism Program’s Resources Center—a resource and referral center for parents and professionals. These unique facilities provide many learning opportunities for students.
The Family Resiliency Center (FRC) is an interdisciplinary research, education, and outreach resource housed within the department. Directed by Dr. Jacinda Dariotis, the FRC’s overall mission is to discover, translate, and disseminate evidence-based practices that allow families to thrive under challenging conditions. Much of the current work at the center focuses on the prevention of childhood obesity, the reduction of childhood hunger, and afterschool programming for youth. An emerging area is the health of immigrant families.