It’s cookie time!

by Rachel Talen

Your calendar says the first official day of summer isn’t until June 21, but the first sign of summer always comes early here at Easter Seals with the launch of Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes’ annual cookie campaign.

This is the first year that Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes will be offering the cookie campaign for Easter Seals in ALL of their 128 restaurants across the nation. With the help of generous consumers, 20 Easter Seals affiliate organizations will benefit from this year’s campaign.

From now until the end of June, Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants will donate $1 to Easter Seals for each bag of homemade cookies sold. And that’s not all — restaurant guests will also receive a coupon for a future visit as a thank you for their cookie purchase.

Sweet Tomatoes has supported Easter Seals for six years and has raised nearly $180,000 in support of Easter Seals families. Donations collected from the campaign support Easter Seals programs for children and adults with disabilities.

So just think: you can go ahead and indulge in a bag of homemade cookies without feeling guilty! Each and every time you and your family visit a Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes in June, you can help support essential Easter Seals programs in your community!

“The Story of Luke” breaks the Hollywood mold

by Elsa Remak

The single, twenty-something man is a role Hollywood is no stranger to. Films consistently revolve their plots around the trials and tribulations young men face while attempting to navigate adulthood.

I recently came across a trailer for an upcoming film titled “The Story of Luke.” Before watching the trailer I assumed “The Story of Luke” would follow the typical Hollywood formula. At the surface, central character Luke is a 25 year old man who is jobless and looking for love. As a twenty-something myself, I say, “Welcome to the club, Luke!”

After viewing the trailer I learned this film completely breaks the traditional Hollywood mold. Yes, Luke is a quirky character. Yes, he is single and unemployed. But his role is something that the entertainment industry repeatedly ignores, Luke has autism. The film follows Luke as he adjusts to life after his grandmother (and primary caretaker) passes away.

Luke’s autism is approached in a realistic manner. He is not Dustin Hoffman’s savant character from “Rain Man.” Luke isn’t a human calculator who counts cards, but this does not make him any less of a compelling character. Director Alfonso Mayo approached Luke’s autism in a way that best reflects those living with autism. Mayo’s mother runs a school in Peru for those with developmental disabilities. Many of the school members served as inspiration for the film. Mayo stressed that Luke would not be perceived as a caricature. “We want people laughing with Luke, not at Luke,” Mayo said in an interview with Disability Scoop.

Hollywood take note, autism is NOT a setback, nor is it only interesting in the form of a genius character. Luke’s experience is just like the rest of my generation’s, autism or not. His determination is something all millennial kids can relate to. There is something magical about the way movies affect us. We laugh with them, we cry with them, and we relate to them. Thanks “Bridget Jones’s Diary” for teaching me that it’s OK to eat Ben & Jerry’s in bed!

More than anything else, movies have the ability to inform in an entertaining manner. If Hollywood continues to portray autism in this normalized, realistic way, society will rethink their perceptions. Hats off to you Alfonso Mayo! Hopefully Hollywood will soon follow your lead.

“The Story of Luke” is currently doing the film festival circuit (to rave reviews). The movie is available on both Itunes and Amazon. To learn more about the film you can check out the “Story of Luke” website.

Adapt and overcome

by Col. David Sutherland

Colonel David W. Sutherland founded the Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Community Services at Easter Seals. He actively contributes to numerous national veteran and military family committees and boards. COL Sutherland speaks in communities at universities, businesses and conferences around the country as a vocal advocate and leader for transformational change. He is a vocal advocate for our service members, military veterans, their families, and the families of our fallen.

I’m the Chairman and founder of the Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Community Services at Easter Seals. Dixon Center is coordinating, collaborating and consolidating the disparate efforts underway in communities across the U.S. to support veterans and military families.

My mission is to align this nationwide network of support for veterans and military families so that the organizations involved can sustain their momentum and maintain the best possible services. Between the drawdown in Afghanistan and tighter restraints on government fiscal resources, there is a greater need to fill in the gaps. These groups must look beyond the present and consider how they will build for the long haul.

My team and my efforts unite complementary efforts in three areas that are necessary to ensure a sustainable life in civilian society for veterans and their families:

1. Education so that veterans and their families can achieve their graduation goals, go one step beyond their “battlefield knowledge” and better transition to private sector careers that take advantage of their skill sets.
2. Meaningful employment that earns a “family wage” — enough to provide for the veteran and his or her family.
3. Access to healthcare beyond what is provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), including information and options, for a “whole person” concept.

If we can efficiently and effectively provide these elements to our veterans and their families — in the communities where they live — these heroes will thrive.

The idea of community is important. Currently, our veterans and service members come home to a grateful nation. But we also come home to our families, neighbors and communities who — while grateful — also expect us to pick up where we left off.

Together, we can figure this out, challenge the status quo, and do the unthinkable — consolidate efforts to focus solutions for our veterans and military families during their transition and reintegration. As Admiral Mike Mullen, 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “Just get them started and I think they’ll soar.”

Freddie Mac offers internships for people with autism!

by Patricia Wright

Internships are a great way to gain professional experience and build your resume to land future employment opportunities. Freddie Mac clearly knows about the benefits of internships as they are partnering with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) and have launched the ASAN-Freddie Mac Internship Program.

Freddie Mac is a mortgage finance company. This new program is focused on finding people with autism for the following roles:

• Architecture and Data Services Intern
• SF CFO Strategy, Planning and Development Analyst Intern
• Planning and Development Analyst
• Securities Internship
• Testing Internship

Not being super savvy in the mortgage industry, I’m not even sure what these jobs entail. The good news is that the position descriptions are listed on the ASAN website. The internships are in the Washington, D.C. area and are 16 weeks in duration.

How fantastic that a company as large as Freddie Mac is stepping up and promoting internships for individuals with autism. I hope that other companies hear about the success of this program and consider starting their own.

Individuals with autism have difficulty finding and maintaining employment. Sharing the news of a successful internship program like this might break down barriers and raise awareness that individuals with autism can be valuable employees.

In case of emergency…

by Beth Finke

This is the first post I’ve written for the Easter Seals blog where I hope readers get halfway through, quit reading, and move on to something else. What I mean is, I really hope none of you are eligible to complete this survey, that none of you have had to endure a frightening storm. But in today’s climate, maybe that’s too much to wish for.

Here’s the thing: The Center on Disability at the Public Health Institute has combined with the Center for Personal Assistance Services at University of California – San Francisco to collect emergency and disaster experience stories from individuals with disabilities who use personal assistance services. The folks conducting the survey call it an “opportunity to share what you have learned in surviving an emergency” and expect these experiences to lead to valuable lessons, techniques, strategies, and skills. To participate, you must :

• Use one or more personal assistants (also known as an attendant or caregiver). This can be someone who you pay for, or someone who volunteers to assist you, including family members or friends.
• Have in the last 5 years (since 2008), lived through a large emergency (such as, but not limited to, a storm, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, fire, flood, heat or cold wave, power outage, or chemical spill.
• Be interested in helping others understand and learn from your emergency experience.
• Be willing to share your written or recorded story on the Center for Personal Assistance Services website.

They point out that By “large emergency” they mean an incident that effected a large physical area, affected many people and overwhelmed local resources and led to the state and possibly FEMA responding. If this is all true for you, then first, and most importantly, I’m glad you are okay! and second, these people would love to have you link to their survey to share your experiences, which may very likely help someone else in the future .

In the meantime, I encourage you to link to the Easter Seals S.A.F.E.T.Y. First page to take a look at our list of tips to prepare for emergencies. S.A.F.E.T.Y. First is a community-based effort to help everyone, especially individuals with disabilities, plan and prepare for personal safety in emergencies.

Using Technology to Empower People with Special Needs

by Rachel Talen

Easter Seals has been working with Comcast NBC Universal and the Comcast Foundation to make a difference in communities by expanding digital literacy, bolstering assistive technology programs and helping to power independence through technology and innovation.

Comcast donated air time to run Public Service Announcements highlighting the importance of early identification and early intervention for children at risk of developmental delay. I’m pleased to introduce Elise Hough, the CEO of Easter Seals Greater Houston and spokesperson for Make the First Five Count to tell you how The Comcast Foundation is making a difference in Houston.

Using Technology to Empower People with Special Needs
By Elise Hough

Without therapy, training or intervention, people with disabilities can face lifelong challenges. That includes millions of children with disabilities, and for many of them it is not a lack of intelligence or ability, but a lack of training, education or access to the tools and technology that limits their futures.

Consider the Gonzalez family, whom I met a few months ago in my office at Easter Seals Greater Houston. The two youngest Gonzalez children, ages 5 and 6, are healthy, funny and talkative,while the two older children, Matthew, 9, and Matilda, 11, can neither walk nor talk. When we met, their mother told us that Matthew and Matilda were assumed to be very low-functioning because of their significant physical disabilities. Unfortunately, they were never given an assessment to determine if technology could help them. It could.

Within the first 15 minutes of working with an Easter Seals specialist, Matthew, who has limited use of his hands, was using a touch screen on a communication device. Matilda, who can only control the movement in her eyes, was using a communication device powered by her eye gaze. They both sped through the basics — “yes” and “no,” then four-word sentences, and then on to more complex communication. Within minutes, they were communicating, for the first time in their lives, with their mother and siblings.

This is the sort of life-changing impact we have every day at Easter Seals Houston, in part due to the support of our community and partners like Comcast who understand that we all deserve an opportunity to succeed.

Last year, Easter Seals Houston received a grant from the Comcast Foundation to support our BridgingApps Project, which helps families, like the Gonzalez’s, bridge the gap between technology and people with disabilities. Comcast’s support allowed us to significantly expand in-person services and our web site content, which reached over 20,000 users each month. The grant also helped us expand the project to Austin and the Rio Grande Valley in collaboration with Easter Seals Central Texas and Easter Seals Rio Grande Valley.

With the impact of projects like ours in Houston, Comcast broadened its support last January by naming Easter Seals its newest national partner, launching the Comcast Assistive Technology Grant Fund to support Easter Seals affiliates who are working to bring technology resources to individuals and families. The partnership also includes airtime for public service announcements to raise awareness of Easter Seals’ services, particularly our early intervention programs such as Make the First Five Count. We are thrilled about our partnership with Comcast, which this year will allow us to develop a year-long “camp” for children with disabilities, siblings and parents to learn how to use technology focused on improving communication, and support other Easter Seals projects across the country that are helping children and individuals with special needs achieve the best quality of life.

“Easter Seals was our raft”

by Beth Finke

The article below was featured in our May eNewsletter. We love sharing Easter Seals news, so if you’d like to receive our eNews every month, sign up here.

An Army Reserve Specialist about to be deployed to Afghanistan for a year, Richard Mariello was worried about leaving his family behind.

“We were nervous,” his wife, Lynn, says. “We aren’t your typical family.” Indeed, in addition to their teenagers, the Mariellos have fostered more than 20 children over the years.

Fortunately Easter Seals was able to help the family through predeployment, deployment and after Richard returned home. From gift cards for necessities like groceries and gasoline, to connecting the family to sources for home repairs, Easter Seals provided one-on-one support.

Today Richard is happy to serve as the Easter Seals 2013 National Adult Representative.

“We felt like we were swimming,” he says. “We’re strong swimmers but sometimes we got tired and needed a life raft. Easter Seals was our raft.”

When you support Easter Seals, you make it possible for us to meet the pressing needs of America’s heroes: military, veterans, their families, and families of the fallen.

Art, technology & autism

by Patricia Wright

I was introduced to Second Life, an online virtual world, several years ago. There has been a lot of discussion and research about the use of Second Life to support individuals with autism. Second Life also has a rich arts community. Recently the Second Life art, technology and autism community has aligned with the new Guardian Autism Art Museum.

Easter Seals has championed creativity within the autism community with our two Sketch-a-Space competitions — in 2010 and 2012. This new museum provides another forum to celebrate the creativity of those living with autism. I look forward to visiting the galleries, seeing the art and admiring the creativity.

Ben’s D.C. Travel Diary, Part 2

by Rachel Talen

I’m pleased to present Part 2 of former adult representative Ben Trockman’s D.C. visit diary. Ben recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. where he met with legislators and members of the disability community in his mission to make airline travel more accessible.

My D.C. Travel Diary, Part 2
by Ben Trockman

Wednesday, May 15

Our second day of meetings started with Lee Perselay and Andy Imparato, who are two top staffers to Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa. Sen. Harkin was the Chief Senate sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the main author.

Our meeting with Lee and Andy was absolutely the most informative and overall the best meeting we had while in D.C. They gave us information about a similar project that had started with a man in Oregon, working with Boeing on creating a more accessible airliner.

They also gave us additional “inside” information on the true difficulty of passing legislation of this sort and what it will really take to convince the airlines that this change is necessary. We also discussed different strategies of publicizing the issue.

Overall, we left that meeting with a lot of great ideas on the next steps on whom to contact and how to proceed.

We then had a quick lunch with Tony Young, who is the involved with NISH, which is an organization dedicated to improving employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Although, the NISH mission does not directly correlate with our cause, Tony is also a quadriplegic and he has traveled via the airlines numerous times. Therefore, we had some time to share a few stories while just simply making a genuine connection for future discussion.

We then took the Russell buildings’ elevator upstairs to meet with the Chief of Staff to Sen. Dan Coats. I once again pitched my idea, and we had a semi-brief discussion on different issues relating to my proposal.

Our final meeting of the trip was with a few folks from the Department of Transportation. The DOT building is about a 15 minute Metro ride across town right near the D.C. Nationals baseball park.

Now, as much as we wanted our last meeting to be the most positive, in this case, it was not. We could certainly tell that the DOT folks directly follow the rulebook.

They brought up safety concerns (something we expected), the issue of how much it would cost to upgrade the airliners, and they even threw in information on how the airplane floor is probably not equipped for the weight of a power wheelchair. They also asked what the demand might be for an improvement such as this, although I was thinking to myself that this is more of a human rights issue than a demand issue.

If anything, the meeting with the Department of Transportation certainly leveled out our expectations for the future. It is going to be a long fight to improve the airlines for individuals like myself with disabilities.

There are many steps ahead, but this is something that I will never give up on. It is a change that has to be made, a change that my family and I were willing to drive 12 hours to the nation’s capital to speak with these leaders about.

Although, this may not happen as fast as we all may want it to, the initial steps have been taken. We are spreading the word and reopening the issue; the conversation has been started. I look forward to reporting back more positive news in the future.

Never give up, never slow down and always move forward.

Ben’s D.C. Travel Diary, Part 1

by Rachel Talen

I’m pleased to present Part 1 of 2 guest posts by our former Adult Representative Ben Trockman. Ben recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. where he met with legislators and members of the disability community in his mission to make airline travel more accessible. Ben’s diary originally appeared on his blog, Ben’s Opinions. Check it out!

My D.C. Travel Diary, Part 1
by Ben Trockman

Sunday, May 12th

Early on Mother’s Day Sunday, my family and I finished loading up the coolers, packed the cars full of our favorite road trip snacks and set out for our trip to Washington, D.C. Our mission to spread the word of the necessity of increased accessibility of airline travel for individuals with disabilities had commenced.

After somewhere around a 12-hour drive, traveling the length of the Bluegrass State, rolling and bending back and forth through the hills of West Virginia and a short trip through Maryland, we finally made it to our hotel, the Crowne Plaza Hamilton in the nation’s capital, about 10:00 p.m.

Monday, May 13th

We planned the trip in a way that we had a free day between Sunday, the travel day and Tuesday and Wednesday, which was jam-packed full of meetings. So, my family and I had the opportunity to meander through D.C., taking in the sights of the beautiful monuments and centuries-old government buildings — my personal favorite being the nation’s Capitol building.

After seemingly walking halfway around Washington, DC taking in the sights, my family and I decided to end the evening a bit early. The plan was to meet Jennifer Dexter, the VP of Government Relations at Easter Seals at 10:30 the next morning at the Easter Seals D.C. Headquarters (which, luckily for us was only a block away from our hotel) to prepare and discuss our schedule for the big first-day.

Ever since I came up with this “harebrained” idea of improving airline accessibility, Easter Seals has taken strong interest. They have been there every step of the way, including the hard work of Jennifer Dexter, who arranged most all of the meetings while in DC.

Tuesday, May 14

The first meeting on Tuesday was with Kelly Buckland, who is the CEO of the National Council on Independent Living. Kelly as a quadriplegic, as well and he provided an extensive background of information on some of his involvement/mishaps with the airlines. Kelly also gave us a few different contacts with whom he has made over the years that I believe will be truly beneficial for our efforts in the future — a good start to our day.

We then loaded on the Metro and headed towards Rep. Susan Brooks (IN) office in the Longworth House building. We were honored to have Rep. Brooks present at the meeting. Rep. Brooks is truly a lovely and down to earth person. After pitching my proposal, we had a very substantive conversation full of interaction. In fact, she suggested connecting us with someone at Boeing to delve deeper into the issue.

After about a 45-minute conversation with Rep. Brooks, we headed to the Senate side of the Capitol to meet with Katie Campbell in the office of Sen. Joe Donnelly (IN).

Our meeting with Ms. Campbell was a bit shorter, and not quite as interactive as what we had with Rep. Brooks, but still a good meet. It was a bit of a strange meeting, being that Sen. Donnelly has not yet moved into his permanent office. So, I had to meet with Ms. Campbell in the hallway outside of the Senators temporary office; although, it was a lovely hallway.

The final meeting of the day was with Rep. Larry Bucshon (IN). When entering his office, I was very surprised to see that he was sitting right there behind the door. We did not expect the congressman to be present for the meeting, although I am extremely glad that he was present.

Rep. Bucshon is on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, therefore he was able to provide some extensive background information and also tell us a bit about what he thought was the appropriate way to continue forward; the possibility of amending the Air Carrier Access Act, among many other ideas.

That was probably our best meeting of the day, the congressman showed a lot of interest, and I truly believe he will be a great ally in our future. He even took the time to snap a few photos before the end of his day; we left his office a little after 5:00 p.m.

Stay tuned for our next blog post, in which we’ll share Part 2 of Ben’s D.C. Travel Diary, and his second day of meetings with legislators and policy makers in Washington, D.C.