Empowerment

Any parent of a child on the Autism Spectrum will tell you life is not easy and definitely not something fabricated. Life with a child with autism is a challenging life, one with obstacle after obstacle. Families need to be empowered to stay strong and fight for their child's rights. Unfortunately, some people are naive about the truths about life with autism. The reality is that 1 in 150 children are diagnosed with autism. While Missouri has improved in many ways, such as increasing funding for diagnosis and treatment, there are still ways to improve.

The Blue Ribbon Panel on Autism was created by Michael Gibbons to figure out the best ways to help families affected by autism. The panel consisted of 16 people, including lawmakers, educators, parents, doctors, and health officials. From the discussions in the panel, the recommendations were brought to light. It created the Commission on Autism Spectrum Disorders, which helps advise the government how to implement the best models brought about during panel discussions. Also created was the Office of Autism Services, which serves as a medium to help families navigate through the various services, resources, and care services available.

Missouri has made these advancements in Autism early diagnosis and treatment, but there are still many more things to do to help. Not only do people need to be aware of the condition and make treatments available, they also need to make sure children are receiving the education they need. Early detection helps children enroll in special needs preschools, but unfortunately, after that, many children are without access to those schools. Many public schools are simply not equipped to properly educate and treat children on the spectrum. Those children should be granted access to the schools that are capable of properly educating. Autism awareness is a stepping stone to this problem, an important one, but it is time we look beyond what we now know and look to changing how special needs education is delivered.

Key Elements

Teaching children with special needs takes an extra talented teacher to know what the child needs. There are special steps in order to make sure the child is getting the education he/she needs, which can be hard to perfect in some situations. Unfortunately, not every public school can provide the child with that type of teacher. This is not to say that private schools can always provide that either. While it may be easy to know what needs to be done, it is harder to actually implement those plans.

According to Education.com, there are several key elements to effectively teaching special needs children:

• A teacher who sets high expectations for the child and who encourages peer interaction and mentoringas appropriate.
  
• Special and regular educators who collaborate in instruction and who have a sense of ownership in the process.
  
• Individualized instruction with decisions based on careful collection and analysis of data focused on measurablegoals and behaviors
  
• Special services are brought into the classroom to facilitate generalization and to prevent stigmatization
  
• A collaborative team approach -including regular and special educators, school administrators, supplemental school personnel, and parents or guardians -is employed to set goals and to evaluate progress of the IEP
  
• An assumption that all children can acquire skills if instruction is modified to help the child succeed
  
• Adapting the school environment by extending school hours or the school year and coordinating with home caregivers.
  
  When children are forced to attend schools (by geographical location or lack of funds to attend others) and not receiving the education they require, they are missing out on windows to their future. Education is the first step in life....from the day you are born, you are learning new things. If a child's brain is not encouraged to grow and grow correctly, it will stagnate and the child's life will forever suffer. Here the scenario changes...there is a private school down the road that has excellent special needs teachers...but the parents cannot afford it. Or the neighboring school district has the best special needs teachers around, but the family lives just outside the borders. Guess who is ultimately negatively impacted by this? The child! Now, imagine if the parents and the child had the choice...wouldn't that be nice?