Three cheers for autism program innovation

by Erin Rogers

Last month at the Easter Seals Training Conference I had the great honor of accepting an award for my affiliate’s expansion of comprehensive services for children and families living with autism. The award is the Lou Lowenkron award for Program Innovation, and it’s given to one Easter Seals affiliate staff person each year.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and when a child has a developmental delay or disability, Easter Seals Peoria-Bloomington is a trusted resource in that village. Our affiliate is made up of gifted, dedicated and innovative therapists who recognize the needs of our children and families, and then find ways to meet those needs.

So while I’m humbled by the recognition bestowed upon me, I want to make it known that I alone accomplish little. It is only through our strong, committed and innovative team that we continue to grow and meet the ever-expanding needs of those we enthusiastically serve.

Special moms celebrate Mother’s Day too

by Beth Finke

Last May I published a blog about Mother’s Day Week, and that post seems just as relevant this year as it was in 2007. And so … I’m posting a link to it! Happy Mother’s Day Week to all you special moms!

CVS Caremark All Kids Canâ„¢ grants help families with autism

by Beth Finke

The Easter Seals 2008 Training Conference Awards Banquet was Monday night, and man, I’m still stuffed.

Still happy, too. Here’s why: In addition to the well-deserved awards Easter Seals gave out to individuals at the dinner Monday night, CVS Caremark Charitable Trust awarded $350,000 in grants to different Easter Seals autism programs across the country. This means the Trust has now donated a total of $1 million to support Easter Seals autism services nationwide.

The grants awarded Monday night are part of CVS Caremark’s signature program, CVS Caremark All Kids Canâ„¢, a five-year, $25 million commitment to support children with disabilities. The 2008 CVS Caremark All Kids Can Fund recipients include Easter Seals affiliates in Columbus, Dallas, South Florida, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, Topeka and Westchester County. Children with autism — and their families — will benefit from feeding programs, specialized summer camps, weekend respite experiences, inclusive childcare, therapeutic and medical rehabilitation services and more.

Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of children and adults with autism we serve at Easter Seals. Although autism spectrum disorders are baffling and lifelong, they are treatable. If you read the comments to my blog about families with autism earning lower incomes, you’ll see that every family living with a person who has autism faces unique challenges. There is an urgent need for increased funding and services — that’s why it was so wonderful to be there Monday night to witness the generosity of CVS Caremark’s Charitable Trust.

No-brainer: families with autism end up with lower incomes

by Beth Finke

The results of a study in this month’s Pediatrics journal will come as no surprise to those of you raising children with autism. The study surveyed the parents of 11,684 school-aged children with autism. It found that on average a household with a child with autism makes $6,200 per year less than an average family where the parents have similar careers. If you like to think in percentages, let me put it this way: parents of children with autism earn 14% less than parents of children without autism.

This seems like a no-brainer to me. Our son has significant physical and mental disabilities. Gus is 21 years old now and lives in a group home. While we were raising Gus at home, my husband and I often stayed in jobs and locations for less pay due to Gus’ needs. And it wasn’t exactly easy finding day care for Gus while we worked. Depending on how Gus was faring, we would cut back work hours, give up fulltime jobs and sometimes stop working altogether to care for him.

I’m not complaining. We love Gus, and we miss having him at home. I’m just trying to explain why the results of this study seemed so painfully obvious to me.

Childhood autism is associated with a substantial loss of annual household income. This likely places a significant burden on families in the
face of additional out-of-pocket expenditures.

Like I said — a no-brainer.

What’s with the rapid rise in autism?

by Lisa Tate

Is the rise in autism due to better diagnosis? Heightened awareness? Or is there a genuine increase in incidence? As a Speech-Language Pathologist, I’m often asked those sort of questions. When we don’t know what causes autism, these can be difficult questions to answer. So it was good to read a press release about an expert doing new research on the rise in the incidence of autism.

The press release reports that Professor Dorothy Bishop, a Welcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, led a study revisiting 38 adults who had been diagnosed with developmental language disorders as children. These adults are now between the ages of 15 and 31, and none of them had been given an autism diagnosis.

Professor Bishop and colleagues looked at whether they now met current diagnostic criteria for autistic spectrum disorders — either through reports of their childhood behavior or on the basis of their current behavior.

These were children that people were saying were not autistic in the 1980s, but when we talk to their parents now about what they were like as children, it’s clear that they would be classified as autistic now. Criteria for diagnosing autism were much more stringent in the 1980s than nowadays and a child wouldn’t be classed as autistic unless he or she was very severe. Now, children are being identified who have more subtle characteristics and who could in the past easily have been missed.

Professor Bishop cautions against using the results to suggest that the prevalence of autism is not genuinely rising. She states:

We can’t say that genuine cases of autism are not on the increase as the numbers in our study are very small. However, this is the only study to date where direct evidence has been found of people who would have had a different diagnosis today than they were given fifteen or twenty years ago.

Results will be published this month in the Journal of Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology.

Autism documentary wins AP award

by Norma Rossi

Celebrate! An autism documentary that Easter Seals Peoria-Bloomington helped put together just won a big award! The Illinois Associated Press Broadcasters Association named Autism Epidemic best documentary of the year at an award ceremony in Springfield this past Saturday.

Autism Epidemic first aired in August 2007 to spread awareness of autism and to get more children screened at an early age. The half-hour piece was written and produced for WHOI -TV by anchor Jen Christensen, and Steve Thompson, president and chief executive officer of Easter Seals Peoria-Bloomington, played an integral role in its production.

You can see part of this award-winning documentary by Clicking on the You Tube link on Jen’s parenting website.

Way to go, Jen — this is a well-deserved award!

What do autism assistance dogs do?

by Beth Finke

I’m blind. I use a Seeing Eye dog to guide me safely to work each day. I literally couldn’t get around without her.

I know how valuable a service dog can be. In some cases, though, I don’t understand what specific things the service dog does to help with the disability.

A recent story in K9 magazine touts a British service dog organization trying to raise £1 million to train dogs to “help children with autism.”

Support Dogs has already trained the UK’s first Autism Assistance Dog with the support of Irish Guide Dogs, which has run a successful programme in Ireland for over three years. Lacey (a yellow Labrador) has been partnered with Paula Craik and her 5-year-old son Joe (who live in Dundee) and in the last year has made a tremendous difference to their lives.

The article doesn’t specify any single thing the service dog does for Paula and Joe that an average dog couldn’t do for them:

• Improved behavior and socialization skills through acting as a constant companion and forming a unique bond.
• Expands the child’s capabilities to experience more from life.
• Calms the child thereby increasing attention span and improving aptitude for learning.
• Reduces stress for all family members.

To me, the description sounds like what average dogs have been doing for years for families with autism. To qualify as a service animal under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a dog must be partnered with a person with a disability and individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of that person.

This article leaves me wondering what special work or tasks these autism assistance dogs will provide. Maybe that would help explain why it will cost £1 million to start a program to train them.

Teaching literacy to students with autism

by Beth Finke

You might remember the blog where Patricia Wright reviewed Paula Kluth’s book You’re Going to Love this Kid. Now Kluth has paired with Kelly Chandler-Olcott to write a new book: A Land We Can Share: Teaching Literacy to Students with Autism.

The publisher sponsored a free webinar about literacy and autism last Thursday. Kluth and Chandler-Olcott discussed the literacy education of students with autism and shared ideas on ways to help students who seem to take in the words without understanding what they’ve read. If you missed their session on Thursday, you can download a copy of the slides or listen to a recording of the autism webinar at the Brookes Publishing website.

Shop at Safeway and support Easter Seals

by Beth Finke

If you’ve been shopping at a Safeway grocery store this month you’ve noticed the employees don’t just tell you to “have a nice day.” They show you how!

For the third year in a row, Safeway employees nationwide are asking customers at check-out if they’d like to make their April days nicer by contributing to Easter Seals.

Safeway Inc., one of Easter Seals’ most generous corporate partners over the past 20 years, is devoting the month of April to raising money for Easter Seals. It’s a coordinated company-wide fund raising drive that works with a tear pad promotion at check-out stands — store clerks ask customers if they’d like to make a donation to help Easter Seals provide services for people with autism and other disabilities. Last year Safeway and its customers raised over $5.5 million for Easter Seals affiliates across the country.

There are over 1,700 Safeway stores across the United States and Canada, operating under various brand names including Safeway (East Coast,
Seattle, Portland, Northern California, Phoenix and Denver), Vons and
Pavilions (Southern California and Nevada), Dominick’s (Chicago), Randalls and Tom Thumb (Texas), Genuardi’s (Philadelphia) and Carrs stores (Alaska).

Over the years, Safeway has raised more than $80 million to help Easter Seals create
life-changing solutions so that people with autism and other disabilities can live, learn, work and play. Be sure to spread the word about this promotion to benefit Easter Seals — and keep visiting your local Safeway store!

Toolkit helps identify autism early on

by Lisa Tate

Matt’s post on Tuesday reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends developmental surveillance and autism screenings at well-child visits before age three. It turns out AAP has developed a toolkit to support health care professionals in the identification and ongoing management of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).

The toolkit is called Caring for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Resource Toolkit for Clinicians. Easter Seals Central Texas is using this toolkit to work closely with local pediatricians and primary care physicians. We want to make sure that if children are identified with a developmental concern, including autism, during the birth to three years, our early intervention program is available to them. That way we can work with pediatricians and families to be sure children’s needs are addressed promptly.

This toolkit works well for us. It’s a great resource, and it provides pediatricians and service providers a way to work together. Using the toolkit helps make sure children can receive a diagnosis and intervention for autism and other disabilities as early as possible.

And when early diagnosis and intervention occur, children can make incredible progress.