The Center for the Dissemination of Information for Children with Disabilities has published an article in Spanish,“El Espectro del Autismo” with great information for parents about the autism spectrum.

HollyRod Foundation Announcement

The HollyRod Foundation is currently taking applications for children with autism to receive an Apple iPad along with specially designed software to give these children the ability to communicate. This offer is only available to individuals on the autism spectrum that are non-verbal or minimally verbal. Applications will be reviewed in the order received and iPads will be given to verified applicants in the order in which they were received. For more information and eligibility requirements visit their website.

This Autism Speaks blog post speaks addresses how to best streamline services to help those with ASD.

Check out this article from the San Francisco Chronicle about a new UCSF study to test if children with autism can benefit from regular doses of an enzyme.

Check out Laura Shumaker’s blog on the AB3632 cuts.

Sen. Darrell Steinberg is committed to restore funding for AB3632, which provides mental health services for individuals with developmental disabilities, including autism. Visit his website for more information or to provide real-life examples of why these cuts are unacceptable.

The Office of Developmental Primary Care (ODPC) at UCSF is an academic unit dedicated to improving health outcomes for people with developmental disabilities. We recently launched our website. The website includes information for clinical educators, clinicians, self-advocates, and others and offers a variety of resources. We invite you to take a moment to review the site and participate in our programs.

On April 13, the California Senate Select Committee on Autism and Related Disorders presented the preliminary draft recommendations from the sub-committees on early identification, insurance, housing, and employment. Click on the issue areas below to view the draft recommendations:
Early Identification
Insurance
Housing
Employment

The Thinkers: Duquesne professor working to help autistic people work
Monday, March 29, 2010
By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Lake Fong/Post-GazetteAnn X. Huang, a Duquesne University professor, runs a program that helps prepare people with autism for work.A young man was cleaning an elevator at a local hotel recently when some guests entered the car.

“Say hi,” said a young woman standing near the man. She wasn’t being rude; she was just doing her job. The woman was a Duquesne University student who was assigned to mentor the young man, who had a high-functioning form of autism and was working at his first full-time employment.

Encounters like this one are a key part of the program devised by Duquesne special education professor Ann X. Huang to help people with autism succeed in the workplace.

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Ann X. Huang
Position: Assistant professor of special education, Duquesne University.
Age: 32
Residence: Ross
Education: Ph.D., applied behavioral analysis, Tennessee Tech University
Professional honors: Association for Behavioral Analysis presentation grant award, 2007; presidential scholarship award, Duquesne University, 2009
Publications: Seven papers in peer-reviewed journals

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Young men with Asperger syndrome or other forms of high-functioning autism, a neurobiological disorder that affects communication skills, can often learn the skills of a job fairly easily. What they struggle with is how to behave with people.

Dr. Huang’s solution? Pair them with mentors who will stay with them throughout the work shift and coach them on how to interact with bosses, co-workers and customers.

After getting a pilot grant two years ago from the state Department of Public Welfare, Dr. Huang has now received a $25,000 grant from the advocacy group Autism Speaks to extend the program to Wesley Spectrum Services, a local agency that works with the families of developmentally disabled children.

Although the program’s scope is modest — it will be able to help only a few children to start with — it is tackling one of the most critical and overlooked problems in the world of autism.

As children on the autism spectrum enter their teens, even those who can finish college often have extreme difficulty finding work. The unemployment rate for people with autism is estimated at 80 percent in America, and of the 20 percent who work, most are in part-time jobs, says Peter Bell, executive vice president of programs and services at Autism Speaks.

The challenge is so great that a new group called Advancing Futures for Adults with Autism was begun last year. At its national town hall meeting in November, Mr. Bell, speaking of his own teenage son, posed the questions that worry many families of young adults with autism.

“What happens when the school bus stops coming to our house? Where will he live? Will he have a job? Who will take care of him when we are not around? These questions weigh heavily on us.”

Dr. Huang said the answers to those questions do not necessarily lie with teaching such children how to perform a job, but how to treat others while they’re on the job.

“Some of them do not greet people mutually. People will say hi, but they will respond with no eye contact, or they might not respond at all,” she said.

“On other occasions, they might be too nice to other people — they don’t realize they should keep a certain distance. Some of them are very sensitive to sensory stimuli, so if they like the smell of someone else’s shampoo they might come too close to the other person and that might offend some people or scare them.”

One good way to meet those challenges, she said, is to pair the autistic workers, most of them young men, with college-age peers who understand all those unwritten rules of social engagement.

In her pilot programs, Dr. Huang has tended to use young women as mentors, because the autistic men respond better to them. But for certain situations, such as when the men are in a public setting, she prefers male mentors.

One example: on a public bus trip, an autistic man was very attracted to a young woman who had boarded the bus. “We say to these young men, ‘If you see a woman, you should keep a certain distance from her and you should not stare at her all the time.’ A lot of autistic people have good memories so they can remember those rules, but it is sometimes hard for them to generalize the behavior.”

In this case, she said, the young man told his mentor that even though he knew the rules, he still wanted to sit near the young woman, but his male mentor physically pulled him back.

Dr. Huang’s pilot program worked with the St. Anthony School Programs, a Catholic system for children with Down syndrome, autism and other disabilities. She is now trying to extend the mentoring system to Wesley Spectrum Services, which works with more than 7,000 children across Western Pennsylvania.

So far, the autistic students have worked at Duquesne’s cafeteria, law school and copying center, as well as at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center housekeeping program and a few other work sites.

Finding willing employers is crucial, she said, but even when she can do that, there is sometimes still the issue of insensitive co-workers.

She went to observe one of her students at a local grocery store recently, where he was bagging at a checkout counter. The boy has Down syndrome and autism, she said, so he is both friendly and tends to repeat himself.

“He was saying, ‘It’s fun outside, do you like it?’ He has good verbal communication and he was trying to greet people, but the problem is he repeats things again and again and again.” It clearly irritated the cashier, said Dr. Huang, who did not let on that she knew the young man.

“The cashier was not very happy about the way he was acting. I had bought some eggs, and she asked if I wanted her to put my eggs in a bag, because ‘I don’t want him to ruin your eggs.’ I said ‘No, no, no, he’s doing fine.’

“He was doing his job very well. The only part that embarrassed the cashier was that he was very friendly and didn’t know the boundaries.”

Dr. Huang never expected to end up doing this kind of work. When she was 24, she was a successful young English teacher at an elite school in Beijing for the children of wealthy parents. Then, she happened to visit a school for developmentally disabled children, and her life changed.

“The school I was teaching in was so different from this one, and it totally changed my mind. In Chinese society, we always think out of sight, out of mind. But I decided we cannot ignore them.”

She applied for a graduate program at Tennessee Tech University, where her mentor specialized in autism, and joined the Duquesne faculty after getting her Ph.D.

Her only frustration has been that her funds for the mentoring program have been so limited. “If other agencies would like to replicate this program or other school districts were interested in developing such a program, I’d be more than happy to help them develop it.

“I hate to refuse parents. They ask, ‘How can we get our kids into your program?’ and too often, I have to say ‘I’m so sorry, the money is limited.’ ”

Mark Roth: mroth@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1130.
First published on March 29, 2010 at 12:00 am

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10088/1046417-114.stm#ixzz0ler5P81m

What a wonderful opportunity to learn from Dr. McManmon we had yesterday as part of the Marin Autism Lecture Series!

Dr. McManmon presentation was entitled “Understanding the Post-Secondary Needs of Students with ASD.” However, he really covered so much more — he was teaching us, through his personal experience as a person with Asperger’s and his professional experience and the Executive Director of the College Internship Program, how to help our children and young adults to acquire the life skills necessary to succeed in their lives as whole people.

For me, the highlights included:
1. Of all of the challenges facing students with ASD, the key issue is cognitive flexibility (above social understanding, executive functioning, sensory, etc.) because working on this will open the door to change.
2. As students move into high school and later college, they need to be becoming independent from their parents’ advocacy and be able to self-advocate. This means having an acceptance and understanding of their diagnosis and what that means, knowing their strengths and weaknesses, understanding their learning profile, and having the ability to talk about this and self-disclose and self-advocate.
3. Along the way, parents need to enable their children to have experiences that mimic the future — community service opportunities, small jobs or internships — to enable them to learn what they like and don’t like.
4. Young adults need strategies for personal organization to enable them to live independently — they need to know how to do their laundry, take care of themselves, etc. This applies to all areas life — strategies for independent living, strategies for academics, strategies for work. Knowing their needs makes this possible — they must first know themselves.

Thank you!