Gov. Matt Blunt signed legislation providing $5 million for the Thompson Center for Autism in Columbia on June 30. The significant investment will help those with Autism throughout the state and further demonstrates his commitment to these families.
His goals are to raise awareness and increase treatment options for Missouri children. For this to be possible, Blunt realizes the importance of adequate funding for places like the Thompson Center. The center was created in April 2005 to promote research, treatment and education to improve the lives of children with neurological conditions.
Autism cases are becoming significantly more common. One in 150 kids—and even more shockingly—one in 94 boys will be diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder—which totals more then 4,200 people in Missouri.
Blunt has passionately fought for these individuals, obtaining $3.9 million in state funding last year for a day treatment program in Joplin (the first in Missouri), to expand staff and training therefore reduce waitlist for Autism diagnosis and treatments and $1 million for other Autism projects. Overall, Blunt has secured $17.6 million for the cause.
http://governor.mo.gov/cgi-bin/coranto/viewnews.cgi?id=EkEuluAFylniSUVCVP&style=Default+News+Style&tmpl=newsitem
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I work at the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders. We have something coming up that your readers might be interested in being a part of.
In late September we’ll be hosting about 20 leading autism professionals from all over the country who are coming into Columbia to be trained on the autism diagnostic interview (ADI-R) process. We’re in need of five caregivers of children with autism to spend three hours with the researchers (the kids themselves do not need to participate). More info is below, but I wanted to forward this your way in case you found it worthy of posting about. For what it’s worth there is a $25 gift certificate for participants.
Thanks, and let me know if you have any questions.
Scott
As part of the Simons project, we are having a large ADI-R (Autism Diagnostic Interview) training session Sept. 25-26 with over 20 participants coming to the Thompson Center to be trained on the measure. We are in need of 5 families of children with ASD who would be willing to volunteer about 3 hours to serve as interview subjects for the ADI-R. We would only need the primary caregiver (probably mom) for the interview, not the child.
We are happy to announce the dates for the next Simons-sponsored ADI-R Research training! The training will be held at the Thompson Center, hosted by the group at University of Missouri/Thompson Center and led by UMACC trainers. The dates are September 25-26, 2008, which are a Thursday and Friday.
Interested families should contact Nicole Takahashi at the Thompson Center at phone: 573-884-1893 or email: TakahashiN@missouri.edu .
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