Dr. Solomon is the Medical Director of The P.L.A.Y. Project at The Ann Arbor Center for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. Board-certified in general pediatrics and developmental and behavioral pediatrics, Dr. Solomon has been diagnosing and treating children with autism for over fifteen years.
Dr. Solomon’s interest in young children with autism and their families began even before he went to medical school in 1977. In 1975, he worked with elementary school age children, many of whom were autistic, in a small special education program in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The type of intervention was play-based and, as a ‘mental health worker’ he spent 8 hours per day, 5 days per week for two years, interacting with the children. Subsequently, in 1983, as a fellow in the National Center for Clinical Infants Program, he met Stanley Greenspan MD, the nationally known child psychiatrist. As Dr. Solomon became familiar with Dr. Greenspan’s Developmental Individualized, Relationship-based (DIR) model, he recognized the similarities between DIR (at that time called ‘Floortime’) and what he had been doing in the Ann Arbor elementary school.
I’ve known Rick Solomon for many years and he’s not only a pioneer and a leader in Michigan, but also one of a small group of clinicians and researchers who are transforming the way we care for infants, young children and families with various challenges throughout the world.
—Stanley Greenspan M.D.
Dr. Solomon formally studied the DIR approach, attending the annual conferences and training institutes of Dr. Greenspan and his associate Serena Wieder PhD who eventually formed the Interdisciplinary Council on Learning Disorders (ICDL). Dr. Solomon is now a board member of council, medical editor of the ICDL Newsletter, and has the full support of Dr. Greenspan for developing the P.L.A.Y. Project model in Michigan.
From 1989 to 1998 Dr. Solomon was the director of developmental and behavioral services at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1990, several parents from the greater Pittsburgh area approached him to help them develop intensive and comprehensive treatment services for their children. Because of state Medicaid law in Pennsylvania, all children diagnosed with ASDs, regardless of parental income, could receive as much intervention as the physician ordered—commonly between 20-40 hours per week—FREE! This was typically in the form of one-on-one intensive therapy, either behavioral (ABA) or developmental (DIR) or some combination, delivered in the home by bachelor level educated, therapeutic staff support.
The staff was hired by three or four large mental health agencies in the greater Pittsburgh area. Thus, financially, legally, medically and institutionally the stage was set for children with ASDs to receive intensive interventions.
Dr. Solomon, along with avid parent support, a dedicated staff, close working relations with the early intervention, and educational systems and large mental health agencies played a central role in organizing community-based training programs and services for young children with autism.
Within two years, intensive and comprehensive services were available to many children with autism in the greater Pittsburgh community and Allegheny County. By 1998, when Dr. Solomon left Pennsylvania, most children with ASDs were receiving these types of services. He received the ‘Professional of the Year’ award from the Pennsylvania State ARC (Association for Retarded Citizens) in 1998 for his work with young children with autism and their families.
Obviously, upon arriving at the University of Michigan in 1999, Dr. Solomon was eager to translate his Pennsylvania experience to Michigan. He discovered, however, that there was no Medicaid re-imbursement for the intensive treatment of young children with autism in Michigan. In fact, there were and are, like most states in the U.S., very few intensive and comprehensive services of any kind in Michigan. It was this lack of intensive services that led to the development of the PLAY Project and Home Consultant Program. Over the last few years, it has been Dr. Solomon’s clinical impression, after following hundreds of children in the Home Consulting Program, that intensive services when delivered by parents are an effective way to supplement the school system’s early intervention and pre-school services.
Dr. Solomon has recently published a research article [link] evaluating the ability of parents to successfully use play-based approaches, and his results indicate that parents CAN learn the play-based methods and that nearly 50% of the children make good to excellent progress, with 25% making fair progress, using PLAY Project Home Consultation model.
To date, thousands of parents and professionals have attended Dr. Solomon’s community workshops and autism and developmental methods. Over 40 agencies in 17 states have been trained in the Home Consultation model, including non-profit organizations such as Easter Seals, state government agencies, and private therapy institutions.
Dr. Rick lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife Linda. He has two adult children, and two grandchildren. In what little spare time he has, Dr. Solomon writes poetry and plays blues harmonica.
