Private Providers Fight Back Over Service Change in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas -- For years, the state paid private providers who care for people with disabilities to help the clients decide how many services they need and how intensive they should be.
But an 11th-hour change state lawmakers inserted into the budget last session stripped the private providers of this case management responsibility, giving it instead to local, quasi-governmental Mental Retardation Authorities, who administer publicly funded services to people with disabilities.
The goal, lawmakers said, was to avoid conflicts of interest — to ensure the 19,000 people receiving Medicaid waiver services at home and in the community had case managers who were advocating in their best interests and were not motivated by their employer’s bottom line

Undistinguished Career on the Track, but a Champion for One Family

Amazing story by Bill Dwyre of The LA Times.

In horse racing terms, Grant and Greta Hays have had a rough trip. They have two young children, both severely autistic.
"After we had Jack, we wanted to have another child," Grant Hays says. "We thought the odds of having a second with autism were really low."
Jack is 6, Dylan 2. Neither speaks, except on rare spontaneous occasions. According to their father, they are antisocial kids, which is not unusual with autistic children. Grant says it creates a life of stress and tension, and cites research that says something like 85% of parents with autistic children get divorced.
The marriage of Grant and Greta apparently is going in the other direction. This is the story of how and why. It is also the story of a big, old gelded thoroughbred named Spot the Diplomat, who, through a series of coincidental circumstances, has carried this family to its own winner's circle.

Shopping for Children with Special Needs Can Be Challenging During the Holidays

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Julianna Basi glanced at the pink dress-up gown her mother, Kate, offered her, but she wasn't interested.
The 3-year-old was even less impressed with the jack-in-the-box, pushing the toy off of the bench where her mother had placed it.
Buying gifts for little Julianna come Christmastime is tough, Kate Basi said. Julianna has Down syndrome and isn't quite ready for some of the gifts her peers will unwrap Christmas morning.

Florida Teen with Down Syndrome Crowned Homecoming Queen

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- In the grand scheme of prayer requests, theirs seemed fairly simple.
Dave and Melanie Stieglitz were asking for friends at their church to pray for the youngest of their three daughters, the one who was born with Down syndrome. Not that they wanted God to change anything about her. To the contrary, they were hoping, praying, to change those around her. Specifically to change her classmates at Fletcher High School. Not all 2,000 of them. Just one.
God, they asked, send a friend to Cara.
One friend.
Someone to sit with her at lunch.
They never imagined that four years later Cara would be standing on a football field, wearing a purple dress that she and her mother picked out for homecoming.

Michigan's Next Lieutenant Governor Appeals for Mandatory Autism Coverage

PORTLAND, Mich. -- The campaign to require Michigan health insurers to cover the cost of treating children with autism is getting an eleventh-hour boost from the man who will assume the office of lieutenant governor Jan. 1 -- state Rep. Brian Calley, R-Portland.
Calley, whose 3-year-old daughter has been diagnosed with autism, is scheduled to meet with the Republican caucus in the state Senate when members return this week to the state Capitol. He is urging the Senate (where he will be the presiding officer beginning in January) to approve autism legislation adopted by the House in 2009.

Promoting Growth Through the Arts

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. -- Patrick Andrews and Billy Guth have never acted, but both will star in an upcoming production of "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.
They enjoy the attention they are receiving from their roles and argue about who has the best part: Andrews as Fred, or Guth as the Ghost of Christmas Past?
For Guth, the narration is the highlight of the play, while Andrews said the characters are what make it a classic.
Andrews and Guth are two of 47 developmentally disabled adults participating in Project Stage Light, a program offered in Cape Girardeau by the Association for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, or AID, to give those with special needs the opportunity to experience the arts.

No Standard for Teaching Students with Autism in N.J.

TRENTON — In New Jersey, one in every 94 children has an autism spectrum disorder, the highest incidence rate among the 16 states surveyed by the federal government.
Among New Jersey boys, the rate is one in 70, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The phenomenon is one of the greatest challenges facing New Jersey's special-education system today. Not only because of the sheer number of autistic students — which has more than doubled in the past decade, to nearly 12,000 — but also because of the very nature of autism.
Autism is a complex biological condition that, to varying degrees, affects a child's ability to communicate and develop social relationships skills that are at the very core of the educational process.
That means that students often have to be taught in a completely different way than other children. Yet as many parents soon discover, the way that happens in New Jersey — which has no uniform curriculum standards for autism programs or any special training requirements for teachers who work with autistic students — can be as confounding as autism itself.