A city catches up on needed autism services

by Beth Finke

With so much going on over the holidays, you may have missed an article in the Stamford Patch celebrating the opening of the new autism services center at Easter Seals Coastal Fairfield County.

The article recognized that Fairfield County lagged behind New Haven and Hartford when it came to autism resources, and that while other regions had established programs in the early 1990s, Fairfield County did not.

Dr. Thomas Zwicker was quoted in the article saying that the new center is filling a service gap and offering Stamford area residents the opportunity to have autism evaluation services nearby:

“There’s a gap in the number of providers who can do the evaluations,” Dr. Thomas Zwicker, BCBA-D, Director of the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Center, said. “We’ll have people from Yale who can do them here so parents don’t have to make the trip to New Haven.”

Leslie Chambers, Executive Director of Advancement at Easter Seals of Coastal Fairfield County, told the reporter that Easter Seals Coastal Fairfield County wants this to be an ongoing education center. One of the earliest workshops they plan to offer will help families navigate insurance for treatments. They’ll be working with area schools to create and improve programs for children with autism, and hope that by partnering with local pediatricians they can provide an opportunity to reach families early on. The Autism and Developmental Disabilities Center will educate families, schools, and pediatricians — what a great way to start the New Year!

A vacation in the Big Easy … really?

by Beth Finke

I have been to New Orleans many times, and I’ve always considered the city a blind person’s paradise. The smell of green peppers and onions cooking in butter, the sound of live jazz in the streets, the feel of warm air, the tastes of decadent meals and drinks — New Orleans is the only city I’ve vacationed so far where sight takes a back seat to the other senses.

Our son Gus lives in a group home, and he loves music. Until I read a post on the Daily Kos blog about a family trip to New Orleans over the holidays with three children (one who has autism), though, I had never, ever considered bringing Gus to New Orleans with us.

The post urges parents to be flexible when traveling, avoid overscheduling your child with autism, and take lots of breaks:

A day in New Orleans (our most recent trip) looked like this: breakfast, an activity (aquarium, museum, whatever), break at the hotel. Lunch, activity (Mississippi River cruise, swamp tour, whatever), break at the hotel. Dinner, walk around town shopping or admiring Christmas decorations, back to the hotel early.

The blog author admitted that taking so many breaks can be “annoying and kind of boring,” but it keeps their daughter with autism on an even keel. Their kids are old enough now that they could stay alone in the hotel room for a little while, but the parents were usually pooped after dinner and had no desire to go out without the kids anyway.

The author describes a streetcar trip they had to ditch when their daughter became annoyed with a fellow passenger: “We hopped off the streetcar halfway through the ride and hoofed it back to the hotel. “It turned into kind of a funny little adventure (at least that’s how I encourage the kids to look at it).”

The author ends the post saying their family’s life is never, ever boring. “It is many things, good and bad, but never boring.”

I can believe that — laissez les bon temps rouler!

Book review: Scholars with Autism

by Patricia Wright

I learn a lot about autism from people who have autism. My job provides me with lots of opportunities to talk with individuals living with autism, and I seek out written work about autism too.

Eight scholars with autism have recently collaborated to publish an autobiographical anthology called Scholars with Autism: Achieving Dreams. Each author has achieved significant academic success, and their stories honestly portray their challenges while demonstrating that individuals with autism do succeed in life.

I was especially moved by an essay Valerie Paradiz wrote called Deep Thinking on Baseball and Autism. Throughout my career I have regularly described the strong interests of individuals with autism as “special interests.” Dr. Paradiz’s essay (comparing the prejudices experienced by black baseball players in the 1950’s with her own experiences living on the spectrum) challenges my use of the word “special”:

Special needs. Special education. Special interests. I’m a writer, so when certain words or turns of phrase don’t ring true to me, I pay close attention, and I try to figure out why they make me uncomfortable. ‘Special’ reminds me a lot of the word ‘Negro’ and how its usage came into question during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Dr. Paradiz goes on in detail to provide insight on how the use of the term special is indeed discriminatory. Dr. Paradiz uses terms such as “deep and focused” interest to describe her current areas of study. I will strive to adjust my language to do the same.

The other essays in Scholars with Autism provide additional wisdom and perspective. All of the authors share their personal strategies in navigating the social world and compensating for their social challenges. Social success is imperative for success in life. The professional success of these authors demonstrates that social acumen can be acquired. Dr. Paradiz and her co-authors provide a great resource in this anthology, and individuals with autism continue to provide me with great insight into being a better autism professional.

We scooped the New York Times!

by Beth Finke

Remember last month when we published a post by Ellen Harrington-Kane about SNApps4Kids? In the post, Ellen explained that the SNApps4Kids program was started by a father of a child with disabilities and has now become a part of Easter Seals Greater Houston. Well, one month later, the New York Times published a story called Finding Good Apps for Children with Autism that highlights Easter Seals of Greater Houston and their SNapps4kids.com program:

The site, a program of Easter Seals, lists more than 700 apps but includes about 60 that have been professionally reviewed. The reviews are all done by a special education teacher or certified therapist, many of whom are a part of the Easter Seals network.

The story touted SNApps4Kids for organizing its reviews and categories by the skills individuals learned from the app rather than the disability or diagnosis of the user.

The Apple iPad and its apps have proven effective in helping children with developmental delays, especially autism, to learn, communicate and handle social situations. How wonderful that the New York Times chose to publish a story featuring this terrific program — the more people who know about it, the better they’ll be equipped to choose an app that is right for them and their child with autism.

Teenage social struggles no surprise

by Patricia Wright

Beth Finke wrote a post earlier this month where she said she hadn’t expected study results to show that young adults with autism were even less likely than their peers with intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities and communication disabilities to see friends, receive phone calls or be invited to social activities. Results of that study, called Participation in Social Activities among Adolescents with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, came as no surprise to me, though — when I speak with adolescents and adults with autism they report that they really do want to have friends and social relationships, but the complexities of navigating the social world feel overwhelming.

Paul Shattuck, an assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University, led the study. Dr. Shattuck is an amazing researcher who uses the National Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS) data to look at life after high school for those living with autism, including the use of services and (most recently) participation in social activities. The purpose of research and data are to inform and improve practice, and Dr. Shattuck’s work is invaluable in this respect. You can link here to read the full study — as an autism professional I am well aware of the social challenges experienced by young adults with autism, and Dr. Shattuck’s data is a reminder that we have a lot of work to do to ensure individuals with autism get the support they need to make friends and enjoy the rich social life that our culture associates with adolescence.

My job has great benefits!

by Patricia Wright

Last month I attended the Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence (OCALI) conference to talk about Easter Seals and the work we do with people who have autism. OCALI uses leadership, training, professional development, technical assistance, collaboration and technology to build state and system-wide capacity and improve outcomes for individuals with autism and low-incidence disabilities. What a great fit for the work of Easter Seals — we’ve been partnering with OCALI for years.

My job involves lots of opportunities to meet people and engage with the greater autism community. I was in the OCALI conference hall when I was approached by a student named Robin who needed to spend time with a non-profit as part of her university course requirements. As an educator I was delighted to be able to support her educational efforts. Robin joined my colleague Lynn and me at our table and was quick to share that she had a direct connection to Easter Seals: she had received speech therapy services at an Easter Seals in the early 1970’s!

Robin had strong memories of being a young child and receiving therapy at an Easter Seals in her hometown in Ohio. She even had her original report from the therapy — someone had come across the documentation while cleaning out old files and they contacted her mother. I’d say that is one of the benefits of living in a small town!

It is so much fun when people share their personal stories about Easter Seals. Meeting people served by Easter Seals, and seeing the positive outcomes is a wonderful bonus of my job.

Swimming with autism

by Beth Finke

We were so pleased to hear that the Ventura County Star in California featured photos of 10-year-old Gabriel Moraga with the Titans Water Polo Club in a photo gallery in their paper. Gabriel has autism, and he learned to swim through a program at Easter Seals Tri-Counties when he was 8 years old.

The Easter Seals Tri-Counties Adaptive Aquatics Swim Program gives children and adults with autism and other disabilities an opportunity to increase fitness, coordination, and confidence in a warm-water recreational pool.

Gabriel started playing water polo after he learned to swim, and one of the photo captions says joining the team is “a move that has improved his quality of life with Autism.”

Go, Gabriel, go!

Free download: college handbook by (and for) students with autism

by Beth Finke

Recently, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) released a new guide about college life for students with autism. The Navigating College Handbook is written by adults with autism, and they say it is the first-of-its-kind to be geared toward individuals with autism rather than parents or professionals. From the Navigating College web site:

Navigating College is an introduction to the college experience from those of us who’ve been there. The writers and contributors are autistic adults, and we’re giving you the advice that we wish someone could have given us when we headed off to college. We wish we could sit down and have a chat with each of you, to share our experiences and answer your questions. But since we can’t teleport, and some of us have trouble meeting new people, this book is the next best thing.

The handbook features first person accounts of college experiences and talks about the social and academic changes young people with autism might expect when heading off to college. Best of all? The handbook is free!

Well, I should say, if you want the handbook in printed format you have to pay. But hey, it’s available as a free download, so check it out.

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