How to keep your loved one with autism safe

Summary

The video, introduced by Jacqueline Wood, a clinical support specialist at FAU CARD, focuses on strategies to keep individuals with autism safe. Various partners and experts, including Dr. Jack Scott and Dr. Steve Wolfe, share insights on preventing injuries and dealing with common challenges like elopement and self-injurious behaviors. The session highlights community resources and collaborations that offer safety training, personal tracking devices, and therapeutic support to families with autistic members. The overarching message emphasizes vigilance and the importance of planning to prevent risks associated with autism in everyday environments.

Highlights

• Dr. Jack Scott raises awareness about the increased risks of injury for autistic children 🧠.
• Dr. Steve Wolfe discusses using behavior analysis to understand and mitigate elopement 🚶‍♂️.
• Zippy Rosen shares insights into financial assistance and support for families with autistic children 💵.
• Community partners collaborate to provide safety resources and training, including FAU CARD 📚.
• Project Lifesaver International implements tracking devices to quickly locate missing autistic individuals 📍.
• Palm Beach County's drowning prevention initiatives are tailored for families with special needs children 💧.
• YMCA offers adapted aquatics programs to ensure safety around water for autistic kids 💦.

Key Takeaways

• Safety is a priority for individuals with autism, necessitating informed community and familial support 🤝.
• Elopement and drowning are significant risks for autistic children, requiring preventive strategies 🌊.
• Behavioral analysis helps identify the causes of elopement, offering effective intervention methods 🤔.
• Families should utilize community resources for free or reduced-cost safety tools and swim lessons 🛠️.
• Incorporating technology like electronic tracking devices can significantly reduce the dangers of elopement 📡.

Overview

The video by FAU CARD, led by Jacqueline Wood, envelops a wealth of information from professionals about safeguarding children with autism. The opening segment, presented by Dr. Jack Scott, underscores the heightened injury risks faced by autistic children. He elaborates on safety practices that should be part of a family's routine and emphasizes the importance of being proactive in identifying and mitigating these hazards.

Dr. Steve Wolfe, alongside other community partners, like Zippy Rosen from Ruth and Norman Rales Jewish Family Services, delve into methods like behavior analysis, which helps families understand the reasons behind actions such as elopement. These insights are crucial in developing tailored interventions that equip families to handle challenges more effectively, aligning support with realistic, evidence-based strategies.

Closing segments reiterate the collaborative nature of these efforts, featuring various organizations that offer specific aids—from water safety programs by the YMCA to personal tracking services by Project Lifesaver. This community-focused approach ensures that families have comprehensive support networks, enhancing overall safety and well-being for individuals with autism across different settings.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Welcome In the 'Introduction and Welcome' chapter, Jacqueline Wood, a clinical support specialist at FAU CARD, welcomes participants and expresses gratitude for joining the session. With a promise of substantial content to share, she initiates the proceedings, setting a tone for an informative session with background music enhancing the introduction.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Overview of Today's Event The chapter titled 'Overview of Today's Event' focuses on the theme of safety, emphasizing its importance to the organization fau cards. The event includes collaboration with various community organizations dedicated to promoting safety in diverse manners. The agenda begins with a presentation by Dr. Jack Scott, the executive director, who will discuss key points and insights related to the theme of the event.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Introduction to FAU CARD services This chapter introduces FAU CARD services, highlighting the safety resources and support offered to families. It mentions the involvement of various community partners who will present their contributions. There is an emphasis on engagement and interaction, encouraging audience questions and providing a platform for them to be addressed at the end of the session.
• 03:00 - 15:00: Presentation by Dr. Jack Scott The chapter titled 'Presentation by Dr. Jack Scott' discusses a webinar being recorded for future sharing. It provides information about FAU CARD and mentions that the organization is funded through a grant from the Florida Department of Education to offer free consultations. The transcript suggests that there is an interactive Q&A session where attendees can direct their questions to specific panelists.
• 15:00 - 33:00: Strategies for Safety by Dr. Steve Wolfe This chapter discusses the support and training provided to individuals with autism and their network, including families, friends, professionals, and community members across a five-county region in Florida. These regions include Indian River, St. Lucie, Martin, Okeechobee, and Palm Beach counties. The organization operates remotely and usually offers face-to-face services through three offices located at FAU Boca campus, FAU Jupiter campus, and an additional unnamed location.
• 33:00 - 60:00: Child with Autism Safety Practices The chapter introduces Dr. Jack Scott, an expert in autism safety, who serves as the Executive Director of FAU CARD and an Associate Professor in the Department of Exceptional Student Education. Dr. Scott is also a board member of the National Autism Society and has recently authored a book titled 'Safeguarding Your Child with Autism'. The book provides strategies for minimizing risks for children with autism.
• 60:00 - 94:30: Conclusion and Thanks In the conclusion and thanks section, Dr. Scott takes the stage after being introduced by Jackie. He begins by expressing gratitude to all the parents, professionals, and presenters who have participated in the discussion. He acknowledges their contribution of time and expertise to the important topic being addressed. Dr. Scott then transitions into the main question of whether children with autism are at a greater risk, hinting at the focus of the discussion.
• 94:30 - 97:00: Closing Remarks and Music This chapter discusses the unfortunate reality that individuals with autism can be subject to injury. This is evidenced by an increasing number of studies that calculate the incidence and risk of injury, including the tragic statistic that 10% of the cases unfortunately end in mortality. The focus remains on the sobering findings from research regarding the dangers and fatal outcomes some face.

How to keep your loved one with autism safe Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] so i want to welcome everybody thank you for joining us today um we do have quite a lot to share so we're going to get started my name is jacqueline wood i'm a clinical support specialist at fau card and um we want to thank you for joining
• 00:30 - 01:00 us for this special event safety is a priority for us at fau cards so we invited a number of partners from other community organizations to to share the ways that they're working to promote safety in a variety of different ways as well so just a very quick overview of today we will first hear from dr jack scott our executive director and we'll talk a little bit about what
• 01:00 - 01:30 card is doing to promote um some of the the safety resources and things that we provide for families um and then we have a variety of community partners who who will be presenting today um as you can see on the on the screen and then at the end we will open it up for questions and answers so if you have questions as we go along please feel free to um type them in the chat box and i will keep track of that and at the end i'll
• 01:30 - 02:00 read them off um if you do have a specific question for one of the panelists please feel free to address them directly so that we know who who that question is geared toward this webinar will be recorded so that we can share this information with others as well that aren't able to make it here today so a little bit about fau card we're grant funded through the florida department of education to provide free consultation
• 02:00 - 02:30 support and training to individuals with autism their families and friends as well as professionals and community members who support them and we cover a five-county region so we support individuals living in indian river county st lucie martin okeechobee and palm beach counties currently we are working remotely but when we are face to face we have three camp three offices uh one on the fau boca campus one on the fau jupiter campus and one in
• 02:30 - 03:00 port st lucie so i would like to now introduce our first presenter dr jack scott he is the executive director of fau card and an associate professor in the department of exceptional student education dr scott serves on the board of the national autism society and has recently published a new book that's titled safeguarding your child with autism which offers strategies for reducing risk for children with autism
• 03:00 - 03:30 so dr scott i'm going to hand this over to you great thank you jackie i appreciate it and um and thank you to uh all of the parents and professionals who have tuned in and to all of the uh presenters um thank you for lending your time and your expertise to to this important topic so uh let me get to get right to it um that we can consider the question are children with autism at any greater risk
• 03:30 - 04:00 for injury due to their autism and unfortunately the answer is clearly yes on this um there are a growing number of studies that show um go back uh last one there we go uh there are a growing number of studies that look at this they look at the injury calculation oh geez this is a sad subject but mortality when children have died we know for example that 10 of the
• 04:00 - 04:30 children who drowned in florida this is from 2017 or children with autism yet children with autism make up only about one percent of the population uh they're very disproportionate of injuries if you're a parent of a child with autism you almost certainly know this but if you don't already then it's you know then this is going to be a big awareness um situation for you the next slide please
• 04:30 - 05:00 a couple things that parents can do to reduce these these risks and my goal and i'm sure the goal of our other presenters is not to scare you but rather to inform you so the first thing to do is to be aware that there is this problem i know that we were it was about 2008 and we had card running on a satellite basis here for our region
• 05:00 - 05:30 and i wasn't aware of this special safety risk for these children i'd heard the reports of children being injured but i didn't put it together and realized there was a a pattern that was readily identifiable that children were with autism or much more likely to be injured you have to be aware of this you have to make sure your child's teacher care providers all members of your family and extended family are aware of these elevated risks next slide next click please
• 05:30 - 06:00 it's important to plan for emergencies and for those daily safety challenges that will come up you will have perhaps challenges trying to get your child buckled into their into us their car seat they may want to bolt when they get out of the uh the car seat and be at a risk in the parking lot you have to plan for these to make sure that those things are controlled child safety is assured you also have to
• 06:00 - 06:30 plan unfortunately for things like an elopement or a poisoning that may occur for the allotment and i'll use the term elopement in place of wandering you may know of wandering but this is a a very very common problem and it is extraordinarily dangerous because for many children it leads to drowning but you should have a plan that is thought out and agreed upon by members of your family prior to any incident happening next one jackie please
• 06:30 - 07:00 um you will want to make environmental modifications you may need to strengthen the door locks you may need to put additional locks or latches higher up you need may need to go to traditional concerns for your kitchen um keeping things uh locked up perhaps in the garage that other families would leave in a kitchen you may wish to make the kitchen
• 07:00 - 07:30 a no-go zone altogether it's best to not have younger children with autism um feel that they can roam in the kitchen they don't roam in your garage i bet in almost all cases because of the presence of dangerous items there but you probably should not let them uh just roam in the kitchen unless they're working directly with a parent um that shouldn't happen but there are other environmental modifications you want to make and windows that may need to be secured
• 07:30 - 08:00 and certainly doors and windows out to a pool area need to be very carefully secured and alarmed and you want to upgrade your monitoring and supervision of your child both electronic you may need a home system um even if you don't feel you're rich it may be this the simplest uh simplest approach to get a an adp type of system to to help alert you if your child does get out of the house and monitoring needs to be up for all of these children
• 08:00 - 08:30 the frequency of it the nature of it um unpredictable supervision is is better but um very frequent monitoring is really important so next slide is you'll open and drowning problem in florida we're lucky we've got water everywhere we've got so many pools ponds canals ocean you name it um but it creates a huge problem for children who dread actually across the
• 08:30 - 09:00 country for children one to four years of age drowning is the largest source of death it is a huge and largely unrecognized problem and we see it as an accident when it happens and it said it is not an accident it is mostly a failure of responsibility someone forgot to lock the door someone forgot to set the alarm someone uh there there was a an open panel on the screen
• 09:00 - 09:30 enclosure and it hadn't been fixed these things are not accidents these are these are failures on the part of adults but if a child does elope uh if they do get away from you where you do not know where the child is you want to get help on this right away next slide next click please behavioral services are essential if your child starts to show a pattern of elopement this is not something you want to fiddle around with i would urge you to deal with a competent behavior services
• 09:30 - 10:00 agency like butterfly effects but there are many others but with a bcba this is a serious problem you need to get on top of this right away next please dr scott just real quick could you move closer to the microphone we're having trouble hearing you certainly okay is that better better i believe no yes let's try that thank you electronic tracking we're in an age now where the technology can help
• 10:00 - 10:30 tremendously and a simple kind of wristwatch wristwatch-like electronic device can allow you as a parent to partner with local law enforcement in our case palm beach sheriff's office and other law enforcement agencies up the coast to have electronic traffic when your child is missing and you don't know where they are the search area it could be huge this kind of device and the process that the law enforcement can use can allow your child to be recovered in 15 to 20 minutes in most cases
• 10:30 - 11:00 that is absolutely life-saving next one please make sure your your child's school knows knows about the the problems your child may have in terms of elopement i've found a number of families that just simply don't tell the school thinking well you know maybe they'll they'll figure it out you don't want to have something like this figured out you want to make sure your child's teacher knows that the front office knows and that
• 11:00 - 11:30 they're prepared to call it in should the child get away from school immediately and not insert a delay the delay serves no one's purpose at all so make sure that school is alerted and that they're careful if your child has a one-to-one can that one-to-one keep up with your child if the child should decide to run away and if not um ask that you get somebody who's quicker and more capable so next please you should also be prepared for
• 11:30 - 12:00 different risks at different ages while drowning is huge for their children with autism probably after the age of age 10 poisoning is also a huge a huge risk for younger children not so much for for older and for um for adults and adolescents transportation risks become huge and and primary uh ages 11 up to 21 and then really beyond but not so not quite as pronounced for the younger children
• 12:00 - 12:30 although we do see a lot of transportation issues with kids uh acting up in a car uh throwing things refusing to allow their seat belt to be put on and there you also need behavioral services that's not something you want to tolerate it results in a distracted driver who can endanger everyone on the road including their own child and family bullying self-injury i hate to say this but even suicide during adolescence and adulthood the suicide is a the research is clear that there's an increased risk and we all need to be
• 12:30 - 13:00 mindful of this but their problems as as children age next slide please i urge families to make in addition to making a plan but to try to make your child's safety a family special interest we know children with autism have a special interest most of them have at least one special interest somehow have many but make your child's safety a special interest for your family and for your child it's possible now to
• 13:00 - 13:30 buy books inexpensively uh picture books when the child's younger on the risk of fires falls electricity drowning all of those things make sure that those are read those go over that with your child make sure your child is kind of a junior safety captain we're not ready to leave and get the car going yet because alyssa doesn't have our seat belt on i have mine on that's what you want these children are good with routine build it into their routine and then
• 13:30 - 14:00 lastly celebrate freedom from injury just as industry does our american industry has a tremendous good record of safety didn't always uh wasn't always that way but now american workers are largely free of workplace injuries in almost all industries there are a few that are problematic but uh celebrate this in terms of we had a week with no no you know nothing happening we had a month where we didn't have any um you know uh injuries
• 14:00 - 14:30 and certainly on a yearly basis make it important celebrate it and share your successes with with other families is my my clear advice on this i think that's my last one other than to say that work with card if you start having a problem and you're you're kind of stumped on it uh card is ready to help you on this we have some resources we can use but we have skill expertise um and caring people who stand ready to help you with this
• 14:30 - 15:00 thank you very much and again thank you to our our presenters for giving your time and talent to us this afternoon i appreciate it yes and thank you dr scott that leads us right into some of the the resources and supports that card can offer on top of this being certainly a special interest for our all card clinicians that can help families that that are in need especially safety wise but we also have been fortunate enough to receive grants from
• 15:00 - 15:30 autism speaks to create safety boxes for our families so families that display a need for some of these materials the boxes have all sorts of different safety materials and resources in them from visual stop signs to put on windows and doors window and door alarms to notify if somebody opens the door the window we have decals for first responders for both the house and in the car we
• 15:30 - 16:00 have drowning prevention materials poison prevention disaster relief so a variety of different supports in that box for our families to to employ and to learn about measures of safety another opportunity that we have is a collaboration with project lifesaver international and palm beach county sheriff's office so we are able to provide personal tracking devices
• 16:00 - 16:30 to our families if the individual has shown a history of wandering or eloping you'll hear more about this so i'm going to be brief on that but for our families that demonstrate a financial need this is offered completely free of charge and we can provide the materials for the families that don't show the financial need we can help to get them set up with the device and then support them in keeping it maintained and any any supports that they might need
• 16:30 - 17:00 [Music] we also do a variety of different law enforcement and first responder training so our card clinicians are able to go into departments and provide an overview of autism and strategies for interacting and communicating with individuals with autism and then once a year we bring in a national expert to do a more in-depth training for law enforcement um where he really gets into the logistics of interacting identifying
• 17:00 - 17:30 with individuals or individuals with autism and then finally we do a variety of different community events including um we've done pizza nights with first responders where first responders come in in plain clothes and then put on their their uniforms and it's just an informal night for our families to get to know first responders and first responders to get to know our families as well and we've done a day for autism that
• 17:30 - 18:00 you'll hear about as well so there's a variety of different events that we put together to to form that relationship between our first responders and individual our residents with autism you may want to do a sound check please can you hear me okay i i can can others okay we're good now okay okay thank you okay um
• 18:00 - 18:30 so next we have a few uh community partners that we want to highlight today um i would like to first introduce um dr steve wolfe president of butterfly effects okay am i on here you're on yes okay great so it sounds like you're going to control the advancement of the slides is that right yes i will so if you just want to cue me
• 18:30 - 19:00 um all right you know of course i edited my slides late last night and sent updates in yesterday i hope we have the right presentation it's you know um first off i want to thank you um you know for having such an important event one of my favorite things to do is to present in front of parents who are dealing with some real issues especially given the current environment really appreciate being here so my presentation can we go to the next
• 19:00 - 19:30 slide please okay so my press can we go you can hit all of the um okay and stop right there so my presentation is really going to be focused on some dangerous behaviors that a lot of our kids who are affected by autism spectrum disorder encounter now there's a lot that you can do and first off um we had a little bit i think i want to make sure everyone can hear me and that the audio is clear i'm seeing heads nod okay terrific if
• 19:30 - 20:00 not i have the chat up so you can um chat me if you feel like the audio is not strong enough so a lot of our kids are really in dangerous situations um can we go to the next slide please in the next slide so when we look at children with autism we notice that when we look at the research almost between 33 and 71 percent have self-injurious behavior that causes serious harm to themselves the next bullet please
• 20:00 - 20:30 and you can hit all of the bullets and just hit it twice more and we'll stop right there and we notice that 71 percent of our kids have stereotypic behavior where they'll engage in a self-stimulatory behavior and a good percentage of them have aggression towards others and we see that parents of children with autism are affected by elopement about 49 of the time so if you're a family member and you haven't dealt with um elopement it is a fairly common thing
• 20:30 - 21:00 to deal with if you're if you have a a child or sibling affected by autism can we go to the next slide please okay and feeding problems are also one of the things that parents are constantly dealing with can we go to the next slide and pica is as well i really did a comprehensive job putting these together if you don't know what pike is pica is when you take an object that's not meant to be eaten you put it in your mouth and many people
• 21:00 - 21:30 swallow them pica and and that allotment are seen as two really significant problem behaviors because they can result in serious medical harm so let's go to the next slide please so allotment is really bolting it's when you leave a supervised area and you're without the supervision and without the proximity of a caregiver so allotment has also been associated with serious medical conditions for
• 21:30 - 22:00 example children get seriously injured sometimes when they're on their own can we go to the next slide please so anyway at this point so it's it's a significant variable and the consequences are you could 65 percent when that in some instances there's traffic injury and then in some instances there's drowning as well so what i'm trying to tell you here is that bolting happens or
• 22:00 - 22:30 elopement happens it's fairly common to families but at the same time it happens for a reason now there's all kinds of ways that you could prevent bolting or elopement from happening but the fact is is that you could put extra locks on the doors you could do higher levels of supervision but i want to give you a strategy for decreasing elopement that maybe you haven't thought of and that's looking at the functioning the function of behavior i've worked with elopement for many for 25 years
• 22:30 - 23:00 and i could remember that i had one individual who was an adult who would elope from a work center whenever they heard a lawn mower and he would run out of the place and he would just run towards the sound of a lawnmower we very reinforcing for him but the problem was is that he never looked both ways when he crossed the street or ran across the street so as soon as this individual started running what would happen is is that we would have to chase him immediately because we knew that he was not being safe
• 23:00 - 23:30 and so we had to teach him the skill of asking to go leave the facility and we would walk him across the street and teach him how to walk across the street so identifying these problems and sort of identifying the function of why is somebody eloping is really important can we go to the next slide please and you could see here that two real problems with eloping are that individuals are not looking when they run across the street because they're eloping somewhere and they don't have the safety skills to cross the street
• 23:30 - 24:00 or sometimes they'll jump into a pool because it's so reinforcing if they see it can we go to the next slide so what does this all mean is the question and how is this helpful to families can we go to the next slide please what we want to figure out is that if we have elopement behavior and somebody is leaving our house or leaving an unsupervised area we have to look at what the payoff is or what is the function it's going to be you can't always give
• 24:00 - 24:30 24 hours of supervision to your child no matter how diligent you are so if you have a child who's engaging in elopement behavior we want to figure out why they're eloping or what the payoff is to elopement so this is where a behavior analyst could be very helpful to you because we need to find out why it's so reinforcing for a child to leave the home or leave supervision can we go to the next slide please so there's been some studies on this and
• 24:30 - 25:00 a lot of times what we find are when kids are eloping about 50 of the time their behavior is maintained by something called positive reinforcement so what this means is that when a child elopes we want to figure out why they're all opening or what the function is in many situations they're eloping because it could be that they enjoy the attention of being chased now this i had happen at a local florida school with a young boy who was eloping all the time and what we noticed is that when he was being chased he would like
• 25:00 - 25:30 look back and laugh at everybody because he thought it was hilarious of course we were petrified because he was running through streets but knowing that this child was eloping because he was getting attention from the teacher from the principal and he was getting this heightened level of attention made the intervention really easy because we were able to give him that attention without engaging in the problem behavior so the other reason that we see people eloping is because they're running
• 25:30 - 26:00 towards items that they want and this could be a pool um kids will know that a pool exists down the street where they've seen it and so what they will absolutely do is um run towards that so they're not asking permission they're just going because they want the item so these are two things that would be considered maintained by positive reinforcement when you look at the problem behavior and i think as a parent that's the first thing you want to do is figure out why does my child elope what is
• 26:00 - 26:30 the function another reason why kids elope and i see this in schools a lot is because they're trying to escape the environment so they could be in an environment like a school where there's a lot of work demands and they said forget this i'm going home and they'll elope from schools and they'll low from other places in a sense to escape a task demand or to get away from something so can we go to the next slide please so what we try to do i think as behavior
• 26:30 - 27:00 analyst is it's critical that we stick we step back and we identify what the function of elopement is like why is the person leaving and then once we figure that out if we could say they're leaving because they want to you know run to their neighbor's house because they get attention there or because i like the way that people scream and yell every time i go it's a heightened level of attention or because i'm going to run to the grocery store because i want a cookie you know but the fact is is that identification of function should
• 27:00 - 27:30 be your first thought you know so when your child not eloping you should think okay what is the function of that behavior why is this child engaging and what's the payoff for them that allows us to really design a really strong intervention plan so if we want to eliminate the behavior of elopement we're going to have to figure out what that function is and design intervention around that can we go to the next slide please so one of the interventions that we use
• 27:30 - 28:00 is something called functional communication can we go to the next slide please so with functional communication is we want to teach our kids to ask permission to leave the to leave the area so we want to teach them almost permission skills so they can ask us and request where they want to go what we want to do is we want to replace elopement with a socially acceptable behavior such as asking permission or figuring out what they want if they do want let's say a cookie from the grocery store
• 28:00 - 28:30 we want to teach the child how to ask for a cookie so we can give them a easier way to kind of meet their reinforcers so they do not elope this is a very kind of complex process that i've broken down into a very simple way but usually this is where behavior analysts can really work with families to figure out why a child's eloping then teach them a skill so they can get what they want without engaging in a dangerous behavior
• 28:30 - 29:00 can we go to the next slide please so there's all kinds of ways that we can teach a child through functional communication because you can say well my child doesn't have vocal skills they can't ask but we could teach a child how to tap us on the shoulder we could teach them how to use a a picture exchange communication system or we could teach them signing but we have to teach them the be placement the replacement behavior because we have to get elopement under control now of course
• 29:00 - 29:30 you have to do whatever you i mean you have to do as a parent to save your child if they're eloping from the house and running into the street you know you have to write or chase them you have to find them but then i think secondly you have to think about the function of behavior and then how we're going to teach them a replacement skill so this doesn't become a long-term problem that we're dealing with for years and years can i have the next slide please so
• 29:30 - 30:00 anyway this is another way that we teach children who have elopement issues so sometimes we see children who elope because they're trying to escape the environment they could be trying to escape the environment because they don't like what's happening at school so we teach them how to functionally communicate that they want to break we put a schedule in place so they can see when the breaks are happening we teach them sign language for break if they don't have the vocal skills but again i think what i'm trying to
• 30:00 - 30:30 emphasize here is that these behaviors don't magically go away you have to teach these functionally equivalent replacement behaviors if you want a long-term solution to allotment can i have the next slide please and the next one okay the other thing that we do when we have cases of alone is we try to teach these kids safety skills allotment is a really difficult behavior to get under stimulus or to get under control so what we try
• 30:30 - 31:00 to do is teach the replacement behavior but we have to teach these kids how to cross the street appropriately we have to teach these kids how to work how to walk around the pool appropriately we have to teach these kids how to ask for help or how to use the visual aids as well we also have to give this child a wallet so that in the event that they do escape they can always pull out their wallet and show it to somebody to see where they are um you know so
• 31:00 - 31:30 these are things that we do on a regular basis for our kids on the spectrum you know it's a very difficult behavior of course to deal with elopement my advice to you is that if you do have a child who's eloping i would definitely try to get a behavior analyst involved do a functional behavior assessment get replacement skills in place and then teach them the safety skills i think that's best practice for when we have to um you know i think deal with these um you know extreme behaviors as well can i have the next slide so
• 31:30 - 32:00 what i want to leave you with and i only had eight minutes to talk about this so i hope i didn't do any damage but the fact is is that identification of function of the function of behavior is critical do what you can to protect your child but then you have to sit back and you have to think what is the payoff to the elopement behavior why are they running to pools why are they running out of my home where are they going and what's the function so with that we can identify interventions
• 32:00 - 32:30 that can permanently you know hopefully decrease that behavior but it doesn't happen magically we have to teach these kids we have to make sure that we teach them functional communication skills we have to make sure we teach them safety skills and that's something that takes a little bit of time to develop i will tell you that i've dealt with elopement quite a bit in my career what i'm seeing elopement happening now is in nursing homes where a lot of individuals a lot of older individuals will leave nursing homes in
• 32:30 - 33:00 a lope and when we do functional analysis on these individuals we find that they elope for the same reasons that our kids with autism elope because they're not getting a high level of attention possibly they want additional stimulation in their environment they're trying to escape what they consider to be a stagnant environment so i wanted to leave you with that that i hope that instead of just thinking about the crisis of elopement we could think about the function and how to design intervention
• 33:00 - 33:30 around it can i have the next um okay i only had eight minutes i hope i did a good job for you um again i certainly willing to answer any questions about this and thank you for having me absolutely thank you dr wolf and thank you for your continued support of fau card and we do have a brief video for butterfly effects [Music]
• 33:30 - 34:00 butterfly effects is a national leader in providing access to evidence-based treatment for families affected by autism spectrum disorder with the rates of autism diagnoses on the rise butterfly effects family-focused approach on services incorporates prescribed teaching child's daily routines and family involvement to obtain successful outcomes what makes butterfly different from other providers is it's the intersection of science and compassionate care
• 34:00 - 34:30 of course we work on the core deficits of autism socialization behavior reduction communication as well but we're also interested in what's important to families going to a mom and saying what do you want us to work on today with their child and it might be something like i'd like to see my child hug me in the morning or i'd like to see my child interact with their grandfather or i'd like my child to sit and listen to a story when dad reads those things are just as
• 34:30 - 35:00 important to us as teaching functional communication skills butterfly effects attempts to start treatment as early as possible treatment should be intensive supportive of families and implemented by trained professionals butterfly effects has a dedicated professional development department that not only provides initial staff training but training throughout an employee's tenure so they are current with the latest treatment developments here at butterfly effects we want to provide the best treatment environment for our families as well as our clinicians
• 35:00 - 35:30 therefore we provide services in a variety of settings including home community and school-based services as well as clinics in some of our areas we completely understand that it can be very uncomfortable and intrusive to have a new person come into your home therefore we really work hard to make the whole family unit feel comfortable from the very beginning of assessment as well as throughout the time that we are providing treatment butterfly effects is working to ensure that all families affected by autism spectrum disorder have access to
• 35:30 - 36:00 effective treatment by teaming with families measuring outcomes and bringing quality treatment into homes butterfly effects is changing lives wow well thank you for playing our video i know that was going to happen um you know um well hey it's it's our honor to support fau regardless um you guys do great work there and um i'm just glad that we can be a small part of that so thank you
• 36:00 - 36:30 absolutely and thank you for providing such relevant and important information we appreciate you um next i'd like to introduce zippy rosen another uh community supporter um she's with the special she's the special needs community liaison and outreach coordinator for rails jewish family services so zippy i'm gonna turn this over to you now okay hi everyone thanks for having me um and i um echo
• 36:30 - 37:00 what steve said that you know fau card does amazing work and we're glad to partner with you guys so what i do is we don't do um programming per se um we kind of more support the families uh as far as you know even safety so my powerpoint is more generally kind of what i what we um offer and then also how we can help with them um so
• 37:00 - 37:30 as jackie said i'm the special needs community liaison and outreach worker for ruth the norman males jewish family services we are located in boca we work with all families you do not have to be jewish to get services from us we recognize the enormous emotional and financial challenges special needs families face and we offer a number of supports for parents siblings and caregivers of special needs family member including financial assistance
• 37:30 - 38:00 individual counseling support groups for parents grandparents and siblings information and referral and jfs connect which is our adult special adult case management program so for financial assistance for that you need to live in our catchment area which is boca del rey and highland beach we have it's a process you have to fill out some paperwork and and give us some supporting documents but if you qualify we can offer financial assistance um
• 38:00 - 38:30 you know up to a certain point for therapies um including aba equipment shadows respite care etc etc including you know safety is in that we can help if someone is in desperate need of a safety water class that's something and they can't afford it they can come to me and we could try to help them um you know putting safety things in place in the home that's also something that we can
• 38:30 - 39:00 assist with maybe financially and then there's basic safety needs like living and electric and all that and we have helped families with rent fpl utilities etc etc so those are all things that we could help as far as financial assistance we also currently have a special fund for those affected by cobit if someone's income has decreased if
• 39:00 - 39:30 they either lost their job we're furloughed we're put part-time they can apply to us and it's a little more streamlined and we could assist them through our special covert fund and we also have a food pantry um that's goes also through regular financial assistance or cobid um that's streamlined as well for families that live in our catchment area um individual counseling so if a family comes to me and they are going through crisis or just kind of need some assistance um
• 39:30 - 40:00 i can meet with them for a few brief sessions um i'm really whatever the need is that they're going through and also you know safety wise i could help them come up with a plan or just kind of help them to assess their safety situation at home and what we can do with that if someone is in need of longer term counseling then we can refer them to our counseling department we have kept up with counseling um through telehealth um you know whether it's through a computer or the phone
• 40:00 - 40:30 we're actually slowly um starting to open up i believe as well um for the counseling back in person for those that are comfortable and we have a new expanded counseling department that's including child and senior psychiatry which is a huge need in the community um because we could do sliding fee if the family is in need again if they show documentation um but just i had a client of mine um who i've worked with with both autism and down syndrome and the mom
• 40:30 - 41:00 called the office for him to see a psychiatrist so this is something that she couldn't really do in the past because she couldn't afford one so we're hopefully going to work with her you know if you need information more about that you can either ask me or we have an intake department support groups so i've been with jfs for five years and we the whole time since i've been there we've been um doing parent and caregiver support groups um and about three years ago we started
• 41:00 - 41:30 co-facilitating them with jeffco um and through those groups um you know we're there to support the parent or the caregiver through anything that they need and safety does come up a lot as well um where parents can talk to the other parents and get ideas of what they've done for safety wise for their for their children um also a couple years ago we started grandparent support group with jeffco
• 41:30 - 42:00 um and we've been meeting virtually since covert started for all these groups and attendance has been great even better sometimes than in person and sibling we were doing sibling groups for a little bit that kind of um even before covert we found it kind of falling through but i am actually taking a course in october for sip shops i'm gonna be trained so i'm hoping once i do that we're gonna get back up and running with sibling groups so i'm very excited about that um
• 42:00 - 42:30 information and referral i get calls from everywhere and anywhere from anyone just regarding services in the area i would also just to say support groups are open to everyone you do not have to live in our catchment um and information and referrals so i get calls from people from anywhere people who are thinking of moving to florida um what we have here um if and i'll speak to anyone you don't again have to be in our catchment
• 42:30 - 43:00 anything from housing which is a big topic you know as individuals are you know living longer housing is a big issue of where they're going to live jobs therapists social activities respite care classes i have resource sheets unlike each of these topics that i can easily send out to families and through federation the jewish federation of south palm beach county who i also work with we have an uh website it's called the jewish abilities alliance
• 43:00 - 43:30 and it's an online resource guide so that's something you can also um you know visit but um and i try you know in the website i'm constantly updating it but i have all our vendors that you know all our partners that we work with and then some and you know even safety and swimming lessons and etc etc and the last thing we do we have a program called jfs connect which is adult special needs case management um
• 43:30 - 44:00 and we have a case manager that works with the families you know a lot of times we get calls anywhere from you know adults on the spectrum to adults with mental illness it kind of runs the gamut and the case manager is really there to help the client and the family navigate whether it's finding a job whether it's hooking them up with social groups like fau cards you know adult social groups um doing you know benefits um you know sometimes kids don't want to
• 44:00 - 44:30 listen to their parents especially adult kids so bringing in a third party has really helped some of these clients you know move forward um with things that they really want to get done um we continue the services under covet she's just really been working more remotely but she keeps in touch with the clients and their families on a regular basis that is our one fee for service program everything else there are no costs too we also do i do respite care trainings actually we
• 44:30 - 45:00 partner with fau card and we have one coming up on october 6th we're doing it virtually where um someone can be trained to be a respite worker we have book that we follow a curriculum um so if anyone wants any more information about anything you know that i've talked about which i'm sure i left stuff out please feel free to reach out um and again thank you fau for uh fau card for having
• 45:00 - 45:30 me and doing the great work and all of your organizations and the video that i have just to give it a disclaimer it's not specific to special needs so i don't know if you want to show it or not it's more general jfs because that's all we had okay well we'll show it um and again thank you zippy thank you so much for your continuous support um we we really value your collaboration and we will show the video
• 45:30 - 46:00 it starts with a phone call an email someone walking through our front door they come to us after their mother is gone while going through a divorce and trying to rebuild their life when the lights are about to be turned off we are ruth and norman rails jewish family services for 40 years we have been providing health hope and humanity to our community by
• 46:00 - 46:30 assisting all of our neighbors in need jfs has provided critical services to more than 15 000 people each year and continues to make a positive impact in every possible way ensuring that the most fundamental needs of our community are met with food and financial assistance and providing those needing help navigating life's transitions access to counseling and mental health services supporting victims of abuse on their road to safety
• 46:30 - 47:00 we help families gain employment and provide financial assistance for children to have productive summers while allowing their parents to work through jfs senior services department and our carelink case management and holocaust survivor assistance programs we ensure the safety dignity and independence of elderly individuals while enabling them to age in a place where they are most comfortable all the care and assistance
• 47:00 - 47:30 we provide couldn't be possible without the tireless help of our dedicated volunteers they offer friendly companionship to hone down the dogs mentoring youths in need of adult guidance they even ensure that struggling families get to celebrate the holidays and so much more we would never be able to help as many people as we do without the dedication and compassion of our staff volunteers community partners and donors
• 47:30 - 48:00 we are ever grateful for the help hope and humanity you provide because of you today we are part of an even stronger community you are the family improve the norman rails jewish family services [Music]
• 48:00 - 48:30 [Music] excellent thank you so much zippy for sharing all that wonderful information um next we're going to go to some some additional community partners um who have joined us next up is dr jimenez gomez he's the neurologist with joe dimaggio children's hospital can you all hear me yes right well thank you for the invitation
• 48:30 - 49:00 neurologist and nerd and neurodevelopmentalist at yo dimaggio so i work a lot with the community in patients with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities uh you can go out in for the next slide i think i'll just emphasize a little bit of what has been discussed before by both dr scott and dr wolf and kind of focusing on a couple of other details certainly not as eloquent as dr wolf in in the description of allotment but i will say you know in
• 49:00 - 49:30 in part from what he mentioned at some point in regards to elopement across the the the lifespan uh you know allotment can be a very normal child behavior uh it's the inherent lack of awareness of danger that you know toddlers have the search for a specific gratification or a specific cause or an escape from a specific uh situation
• 49:30 - 50:00 without that safety awareness that you know is not unusual and not uncommon by any means in you know what an 18 month old or a 24 month old but in the case of obviously folks with autism because of the disorganized development this persists over time and there is a disproportionate response there's not you know a significant degree of uh information that we could extrapolate to say all individuals have the same profile or the
• 50:00 - 50:30 same causes but oftentimes as as as dr wolf had mentioned uh were extensively and and more precisely before identifying why whether it's an evasion of some situation a response to an overstimulation a response to some potentially rewarding uh situation running defying something or running from somebody in a playful manner and whatnot is is probably the most important factor here and obviously the risks that you incur
• 50:30 - 51:00 are similar for children with and without autism or for individuals with them without autism or with any developmental disability you know you run out into the street and you put yourself in danger you run into any body of water and you put yourself in danger i would uh you know place emphasis on what dr scott had mentioned that you know there's a huge number of accidental deaths related to drowning in a population with and without autism from ages one to
• 51:00 - 51:30 four the one thing i would emphasize on and this is not within the realm of autism exclusively but for any child one to four with any of any behavior is that most drownings actually tend to occur in the bathtub so that's the the simplest circumstances are often ones that we you know are not quite as vigilant off and still a four-year-old can very much drown in a bathtub just as they can drown in a 50 meter pool or whatever it is but
• 51:30 - 52:00 what we do have in regards to autism in regards to the bodies of water which is a little bit more of the focus of the conversation is that there are certain times of day in certain circumstances that are uh that put us at risk for individuals with autism particularly you know a little bit of the research that has been done because it's fortunately not particularly quite as common uh but you know afternoon hours or into the evening hours where there's
• 52:00 - 52:30 fewer instances of supervision and then bodies of water that are unprotected close to the home and we are at a particular risk obviously in south florida where we have an abundance of pools but we also have an abundance of canals but we also have the ocean but we also have uh all sorts of other inlets and whatnot so vigilance to that end is is key now from the neurological perspective uh what i'd like to place emphasis on is the time sensitive aspect of it it's it's never what it is
• 52:30 - 53:00 on television it's never in the sequence or the dramatized manner in which you tend to see these situations on television unfortunately the large majority of patients who you know i've had the misfortune to see in florida or in texas before that or in ohio before that it's been a very simple and straightforward circumstance in which there's a brief time lapse and i would say that that's the most
• 53:00 - 53:30 important aspect for every parent to consider is that it takes a very very small fraction of time to actually cause significant impact i don't mean to scare anybody with this but to emphasize the importance of continued vigilance now children who are spotted sooner within the circumstance which even the most vigilant of parents can you know go into children who are spotted in time removed from the water and assisted in
• 53:30 - 54:00 time who are conscious of time of arrival to the hospital have better outcomes we know that much there's you know a good understanding of what represents the danger to the brain and to the lungs and whatnot and what time frame to observe and whatnot but what i'll emphasize on that is that even if there's a there's a lap there's a time to remove to assist we also know that better training in how to assist children bodes better outcomes children who have
• 54:00 - 54:30 spent a long time or had not received assistance up until the point of arrival of ems or into the hospital are at much higher risk of having significant neurological outcomes or significant health outcomes and even brain death or death so you can go on to the next the next slide so i you know i always like to think of this as you know you must prevent but you also need to plan you need to be aware that
• 54:30 - 55:00 even the most vigilant even the most prepared family needs to assume that this still may happen for whichever reason we all know you know we have children that have and don't have developmental disabilities that are still bright enough to open something or to or to elope in one or another way they figure it out and we need to assume what do we do if and when so i i'll emphasize on some of the prevention strategies that we have already talked about there's a number of
• 55:00 - 55:30 tools and and strategies for securing the home that were real you know familiar with in south florida particularly securing a pool or securing you know the front gates and the the yard and whatnot to prevent the elopement or any you know jumping into a pool and whatnot but obviously that goes hand in hand with what dr wolf had mentioned extensively which is how do we train the children to functionalize some of the behaviors and some of the
• 55:30 - 56:00 communication and to gain some of those skills which is the core aspect of how behavioral functional behavioral analysis and behavioral therapies help in this context now i i underline designated eyes here because we all have pools for a laser purpose in south florida or there's a number of pools for laser purpose and we go to the beaches and whatnot and the intent typically is to have fun and for
• 56:00 - 56:30 everybody to have fun and but across the board you know we have to have somebody that's vigilant of any specific child at any specific time not a single individual looking at everybody but an individual looking at one specific child at risk having kind of the designated uh observer so to speak and informing your community and having those close to you and around you is important similar to
• 56:30 - 57:00 what we have talked about with having the wallet and the information of the medical history i'd say tracking devices are a very useful tool but i don't want those to be false reassurance necessarily those eyes still need to be on the children and then the planning ahead aspect as i said you know better support early on votes better outcomes so training and basic life support for parents is one of those resources we're always looking to partner with in the community folks such as the fau card program and
• 57:00 - 57:30 whatnot that have a more extensive reach for parent education and parent support or a wonderful resource in this and then obviously what we're doing over here today which is how to engage first responders how to have those folks who are are front line uh know how to react to the situation with them with a child but particularly in this case with the child definitely excellent thank you dr jumines gomez
• 57:30 - 58:00 um some really great information uh next i'd like to introduce uh deborah dietz the executive director of the disability independence group can hear you now okay excellent then i'm gonna start hi my name is debbie dietz and i'm the executive director of disability independence group or dig we are a non-profit advocacy center for disability rights and we're located in miami florida our mission is to
• 58:00 - 58:30 expand opportunities for participation education employment and acceptance of persons with disabilities through advocacy litigation education and training and today i'm going to tell you about a few of our projects so we can switch to the next slide please deborah could you maybe speak up just a little bit i think some are having difficulty hearing you sure is this if i hold the microphone is
• 58:30 - 59:00 this better i i think so okay um our first project that i want to talk to you about is our wallet card project and this is actually a project we did in conjunction with um umnsu card which is the card office in miami florida and one of our local police departments and this project is was created to help people with disabilities find a way to safely disclose their disability to law enforcement
• 59:00 - 59:30 and in this project we make a custom wallet card or communication tool that tells the officer about the person with the disability the card includes the person's name their disability and some basic characteristics about their disability such as the person might not make eye contact they may need extra time to answer questions and they may be so nervous that they have trouble communicating we also tell them to not assume that
• 59:30 - 60:00 this behavior means the person is suspicious of doing something wrong and on the back of the card we add an emergency contact name and phone number so that the officers can call and get more information if they need in order to assess a situation and then what's so nice about the card is that we can actually add two custom statements that are unique and specific for that person that has the card and this could be i might flap my hands rich right if you
• 60:00 - 60:30 did in front of an officer might be seen as aggressive and the officer might escalate the situation when in fact that's what that person does all the time or pace back and forth or repeat what they're saying so we can actually customize the card so that it's useful for the person that's holding it now we do have two requirements for this project the first is that the person must be 14 years or older the assumption being that
• 60:30 - 61:00 they're out in the community without a parent or caregiver and the second is that the person must be verbal enough to say can i show you my wallet card and this is for the protection of the individual we don't want someone reaching for the card or going into a pocket or bag without letting the officer know what they're doing because we don't want to take a really good idea and create a bad situation because the person didn't disclose or or ask
• 61:00 - 61:30 permission before they reach for the card now we know that this doesn't solve the problem for every person but this unique project that we've created is for a unique part of the population and for that population it does work i would love to ultimately expand the project and make another card for either younger children or individuals that are not as verbal but right now that's
• 61:30 - 62:00 not the role of our project all right so we also the second part of the project is that we have a police training and it's available for any police department or law enforcement agency and this training tells the officers what to do if someone hands them a card because if we haven't trained the officers we've only solved half of the problem so we need to explain to the officers what to do and what this card means and in your specific area your port st lucie police department has
• 62:00 - 62:30 received the training and has implemented the project none of the other departments in your area have but we're willing and would love to give it to them and share it with them when they're ready and you can get more information on our project on our website the cards can be ordered on our website they're 100 free and the police training is free and we have a video that's on our website that shows the individual how to safely use the card and there's
• 62:30 - 63:00 different hypothetical scenarios that show what to do in different police interactions i'm looking in the chat box someone's saying yes we can reach if you guys we can talk and you guys can help us and we can reach out to them and get it to that police department the second project i want to tell you about it this quickly is called our supper social club and this is a neuro-diverse dinner it started in person in miami but because of kovid we we switched it
• 63:00 - 63:30 to a virtual event and it's actually been able to expand to all over the country and it's just a place to have a conversation right to go in theory when we started go out to dinner eat dinner talk hang out there's no agenda there's no um kind of pride process for the day we just go out and have dinner and talk we talked about superheroes i'll make it jackie we talked about superheroes movies just fun stuff
• 63:30 - 64:00 our next one is october 5th at 6 30 p.m and i believe some of your fau card adults have been attending the last few and it's been fun to expand it and include more people than just miami the last thing i want to tell you real quick is we're doing a voting rights summit on disability issues on october 6 from 9 to 1 and as we know voting impacts our laws and how our laws are implemented so if you guys want to
• 64:00 - 64:30 be part of it it'll be virtual and it will be on october 6 from nine to one so i know i'm out of time so thank you so much for letting me be here today and um if you have any questions you can email me thank you thank you debra and yes we have lots of our adults that attend and and have had a wonderful experience so thank you for all that great information next i'd like to introduce chief jean saunders who's the founder and ceo of project lifesaver international
• 64:30 - 65:00 so gene i'm going to hand this over to you now can you hear us gene i can hear you can you hear me now yes we can hear you okay good good you notice we had a little problem there well one of the reasons or some video is we seem to have a uh camera connection problem i am currently
• 65:00 - 65:30 in our operations office at chesapeake virginia and we're just not connecting very well to uh to the zoom server here as far as video however uh project lifesaver uh is a non-profit and we are specifically deal with the cognitive issues of autism and alzheimer's wandering we started it specifically for
• 65:30 - 66:00 alzheimer's to deal with with that particular type wandering and shortly thereafter uh we noticed or and through other ways they found out that autism uh now or they had a growing and we also know that most member agencies in 50 states and eight provinces in canada
• 66:00 - 66:30 and western australian police now how do we do this well between these uh just five in a few minutes uh how to use it how to operate the program but we also give them a familiarization on the people they're going to be dealing with and how to interact with them it's one thing to locate them it's another thing to get them in the car and get them back home there's some
• 66:30 - 67:00 skills that are tangent to that we operate with radio frequency locating equipment person the agencies will place a radio transmitter wristband with the person if they should elope or wander that agency will be notified they will respond into the area using the training that they have received locate the radio
• 67:00 - 67:30 signal track to it locate the person and bring them back we this is not gps before i'm asked that question and i get it all the time we don't use gps because in this kind of situation there's too many failures uh we're very proud that our member agencies since we started 21 years ago have made almost 3 800 recoveries safely and effectively within a average time of
• 67:30 - 68:00 30 minutes we have found that lately the biggest uh population that we deal with is on the spectrum especially in the florida area or during the warm weather there seems to be a lot more elements and we do receive after-action reports from all of our agencies that make the rescues and recovery so that we can uh denote the uh information around this
• 68:00 - 68:30 particular incident as to how far away they were where they were the time it was the time of day and the weather such as that we have two offices our headquarters is in port st lucie florida and our operations and training offices here in chesapeake they deal with the equipment and setting up of the training i think you know the down and dirty is
• 68:30 - 69:00 that probably covers uh project lifesaver it is a locating organization that trains and works for public safety so the persons living in a particular area such as port st lucie can contact either the st lucie police department or in the county of the st lucie county sheriff's office who can provide them the services if you'd like to get some more information on project lifesaver
• 69:00 - 69:30 you can call us and the number is on the screen or you can go to our website which is also on the screen projectlifesaver.org i think until we get to the questions jackie that pretty much covers it thank you for your time i appreciate it and we're honored to work with maucar and dr jack scott and thank you for this uh time to uh allow me to describe our program absolutely thank you gene um and again
• 69:30 - 70:00 we're we are honored to work with project lifesaver too you can always contact for the families that are in our catchment area can contact card as well if in need of a bracelet and we can help make that connection too thank you gene next i'd like to introduce anna stewart the manager of drowning prevention coalition of palm beach county hi everybody hi can can you hear me really good i am i just love this technology it's
• 70:00 - 70:30 fantastic uh so basically we're encouraging everybody to be water safe and water smart year round obviously this is very important for children uh who have autism i've been with the coalition for almost 20 years now with regards to palm beach county drowning stats we average about 48 drowning deaths per year we have drownings occurring year-round most often however it's usually during the summer time
• 70:30 - 71:00 number one place where drownings happen is pools followed by the ocean and then motor vehicle crashes and bodies of water is the third leading cause of drowning in this county oftentimes when we think about drowning we think oh children children children which is true but every age group drowns but in particular particularly in palm beach county it's seniors that have the highest drowning rate in palm beach county not children but then again you figure who's the majority of our population is seniors so
• 71:00 - 71:30 with that being said we just want to make sure that everybody is aware that regardless of your age race gender and socioeconomic background everyone is susceptible to drowning and even if you know how to swim you can still drown so what does the coalition do well we educate our job is to go out into the community and provide free water safety programming to anybody who's willing to listen to us talk so we go into preschools elementary schools middle schools high schools homeowner associations
• 71:30 - 72:00 parent groups we do special needs classes and we also go to a lot of health and safety fairs where we hand it well not now because of covid but we do hand out water safety swimming information at health and safety fair so if your organization is having one of those in the near future you know next year when we can do it in person we'll be more than happy to come this is something that's really important for everybody everybody to know is that we have a free reduced cost swim program for children ages 2 through 12. children that are special needs
• 72:00 - 72:30 automatically qualify for this program as long as they don't know how to swim and they're ages 2 through 12. we usually have around 16 18 aquatic facilities throughout palm beach county that participate in the swim program in order to apply all the parent has to do or caregiver is go to our website at forward www.pbcgov.org dpc which i will put um in the chat so that way you can take down that information but as i said uh it's free for
• 72:30 - 73:00 individuals with special needs particularly with those with autism they are eligible for three certificates each certificate is good for a minimum of six to eight lessons in the water we are funded by the palm beach county board of county commissioners and the children's services council of palm beach county so we are actually a government entity not a non-profit which oftentimes people get confused now why should we care about water safety and drowning prevention particularly with the autism community well children with autism
• 73:00 - 73:30 they're especially attracted to water so that's why project lifesaver is really good and all these other organizations that have present you know presented as far as phenomenal uh we're here for the community and to pay close attention to those with autism go ahead jackie okay so hopefully all of you can see this but this is some of the resources that are available for children with autism this actual brochure is also on our website so you're more than welcome to go to our
• 73:30 - 74:00 website and print that out or you can call me and i can send you some that's not a problem as i said my name is anna stewart my number's 561-616-7068 that's my email normally we're out in the community doing water safety presentations now we're doing it virtually so water safety is a year-round proposition and we just want everybody to be water safe and water smart and to utilize the free services that our organization provides thank you everybody excellent thank you so much anna more great information
• 74:00 - 74:30 next i would like to introduce liz schmidt the director of aquatics and community water safety for the ymca of south palm beach hi good afternoon everyone i wanted to just share with everybody some of the resources we've heard a lot today that drowning is a really significant risk to our children and adults with autism and so what to do where to go and so i want to talk a little bit about a
• 74:30 - 75:00 program we have at our ymca we offer an adaptive aquatics program and this program is really um designed for families who have kids with special needs it's completely run separate from our other programs our other water safety and swim lesson programs and we work with the families most importantly on funding so every year we work to get funding dollars on the y does to support this program and so we offer significantly reduced
• 75:00 - 75:30 cost one-on-one swim lessons for kids with special needs and so we work a lot with a card to get families connected to us all of our programming um happens within our indoor heated aquatic facilities and all of our staff in the program are trained um working with kids with special needs most of them actually do work in the palm beach county school system um as their day job and then they they do this and nights and weekends um to help support and teach kids how to swim and this program really came about because we saw a need
• 75:30 - 76:00 in our community for swim lessons and quality programming uh for kids with autism we also work with young adults and adult programs as well so if anybody um falls into those categories we don't just work with one specific age group but we work across across the gamut um in addition to that we provide these one-on-one lessons for thirty dollars which is a significant price and decrease than what you'd see for other one-on-one programs um during the covet shutdown we knew
• 76:00 - 76:30 that water safety is such an important part of what our community needs we offered um free water exploration so our ymcas opened up in june and upon opening our lives we started bringing back our kids and families in our program um to be able to um to be able to provide um water safety so that they could continue to be in the water to be safe around the water and what we're really doing is we're teaching those rules um much as what the doctors described
• 76:30 - 77:00 in the first part of the presentation we're really working with these kids and families to teach them rules around water safety in real time so talking about setting boundaries talking about the boundaries and the rules with going into the water going near the water wearing a life jacket for some of our kids and families is so important because of those skills that they may or may not be able to obtain so working with those families not only with the kid but also with the parents on water safety making sure that they understand our staff talk to all of the
• 77:00 - 77:30 families individually about what are water hazards in your home we know allotment is a big issue um and so our instructors do an intake with each family upon the intake they discuss what are the water hazards in your home do you have a pool do your neighbors have a pool if our parents say they don't know we ask them to go check see what's around in your community and what are some of the hazards that our kids could come upon and then we go from there and we do work with those kids during the lesson and talk with them about some of those hazards that they might encounter when they're not in our program but
• 77:30 - 78:00 most importantly we're teaching them safety we do find a lot of our children really do enjoy coming to the lessons and so we've taught kids um to not only be safe around the water but then we continue lessons into full-on strokes and eventually joining a swim team as a swimmer and an advocate for the competitive sport of swimming it is an awesome sport for kids with autism because it's individual but it's team and so we work with a lot of our middle school age kids and those
• 78:00 - 78:30 families on potentially going into swim team as a sport because they can compete on the same team with neurotypical children and so we see um that's really awesome way for those kids to all be together and be inclusive um and so we we start that right in our swim lessons so if anyone has any questions i see there's a couple in the chat so i'll go ahead and answer those um but you can go ahead and find me my email is l schmidt at ymca spbc.org or you can go to ymcaspbc.org
• 78:30 - 79:00 and under programs click on adaptive aquatics and i'll go ahead and answer the questions in the chat great thank you so much liz um just a quick announcement we've had so much really good information and we still have more to come but we are running about 10 15 minutes behind schedule so just sort of a heads up if you're able to stay on with us we'd love to have you remain but just a heads up that we are a little bit behind schedule
• 79:00 - 79:30 um but next i would like to introduce um deputy scott horitz with palm beach county sheriff's office can you hear me scott there we go can you guys hear me now yes we can hear you it would help to unmute all right i just want to thank card for uh
• 79:30 - 80:00 asking palm beach county sheriff's office to participate in this uh it's a really exciting webinar to participate in and hear all the wonderful you know views and how everybody's you know geared towards building up the autism community and helping the autism community and we we do several things within the sheriff's office um one of the first things that we um engage in is our project lifesaver which dr scott talked about in a little bit
• 80:00 - 80:30 earlier jacqueline mentioned it and then also you know gene saunders for our personal tracking devices uh we are part of the program um we've expanded it um tenfold this past year instead of just having a few people within the agency we have spread it out to every single district we have what's called our ptt liaisons where they're continually working with the individual deputies i'm training on the the equipment we've
• 80:30 - 81:00 got the personal tracking device in our helicopters and we've got the equipment to put in our cars and then as we narrow things down um we have the handhelds when we need to go out on foot um and it's it is a a wonderful program and a service that we're able to participate with uh for positive results so that's one of the things that we do in the sheriff's office um when it comes to you know autism community but we also for those with dementia and other kind of cognitive
• 81:00 - 81:30 conditions um as well um and we also have what's called our crisis intervention teams um crisis intervention for us is an emergency mental health care aim to assist individuals who are in a mental health crisis situation and you know ultimately the goal is to minimize the potential risk for mental health harm to self or others and then we have our crisis intervention team which
• 81:30 - 82:00 are law enforcement um deputies we have correction deputies communications personnel and civilians who receive uh specialized training in this for mental health crisis related calls in additional to our regular duties so the cit members are specifically trained to address these mental health crisis when a call comes in cit members are preferred responders when we do work with the citizens with mental health issues and then we have our behavioral services
• 82:00 - 82:30 unit which is a interdisciplinary division of federal state local law enforcement case managers mental health counselors clinical social workers marriage counselors and therapists who provide crisis intervention for prevention to members public that might have risk and then you know we do our annual law enforcement training with card which is very important more training that we have for our deputies the better interaction we have when we are responding to a home with someone
• 82:30 - 83:00 with autism and that brings up you know when we do respond to a home with autism it's usually for negative reasons most of the time between law enforcement fire rescue and several years back i was working for the village of wellington which is the palm beach county sheriff's office and card reached out to them to see how we could bring awareness and resources to the western communities um and with that i was brought in to assist with that
• 83:00 - 83:30 now i'm not geared towards autism but i was good at building um events you know autism is my wife's wheelhouse she's a bcba so um through this i leaned on her as well and through the partnership with card we created what's called the day for autism building bridges with law enforcement picnic and it's an opportunity for the autism community to come out and interact with law enforcement it's all done through sponsorship
• 83:30 - 84:00 community has really pitched in to help pay for things first year it was on the smaller side but we provided food interactive games last year unfortunately we had to cancel it due to covid but we do have a tentative target date for this year of february 13th and where we provide food interaction 20 different vendors we have a touch a truck event interactive games a dj trackless train bounce house
• 84:00 - 84:30 you know anything and everything that we can do where we build that gap between law enforcement and autism community and this is in hopes that maybe just maybe you know when we do respond to a home they see the uniform and hopefully maybe that can become a calming mechanism but it also gives our deputies first-hand um interaction with with families and um you know not just responding to the home when it's a negative reason they do the art projects with the kids they'll eat with the kids
• 84:30 - 85:00 we had a few deputies dance uh the previous year with the kids so um this is constantly growing uh for those that were supposed to participate in at last year you'll be getting the save the date here pretty soon um i have to give you know first rights refusal to those that we're going to participate and then unfortunately if those that we're going to can't then we'll open it up to a little bit more of the um the public so and you know with that again thank you um for having
• 85:00 - 85:30 the sheriff's office participate in this and i'll be here to answer questions as well excellent thank you scott um next i would like to introduce jeff hines fire safety specialist with palm beach county fire rescue i'm actually anna stewart i just changed clothes if you made the video right there um no thank you hello how's everybody doing yeah i'm jeff with uh palmie training fire rescue so as far as the fire department pre-koban you know we do a lot of station tours we especially well personally i've done
• 85:30 - 86:00 station tours for the autistic community and depending on the the severity you know i've done everything from having the trucks turn on their lights turn on their sirens which you know get perceived different ways sometimes it's really scary to the kids to letting them try on bunker gear a lot of touch and feel hand them the gloves let them try them on some you know put everything on and take great pictures and have fun and some are a little hesitant but it's just to get them comfortable and familiar with what's going to potentially happen obviously if there's an emergency or fire and the fire trucks come
• 86:00 - 86:30 there's a lot of people a lot of noise a lot of people look different so one of the biggest concerns when it comes to fires in particular is is hiding the uh the autistic community will have a habit of hiding which obviously makes it a little bit more difficult for the firefighters to find them and they're they're scared of the firefighters in the bunker gear which goes back to you know if you can get into a fire station and you can you know let the kids or the autistic uh community see feel touch and and see what the stuff looks like it helps but with kobe right now unfortunately the stations are shut down from the
• 86:30 - 87:00 education standpoint i'm just like anna we're doing everything virtually um you know if anybody is interested we can still do virtual tours um you know we can play sirens and and horns and show gear and all that so it's still an option uh the other big deal is uh to basically have somebody responsible for the autistic person um because one of the big things is they may try to re-enter the house or the building to go find an object which is bad people re-entering the odds of them coming back on are pretty slim so
• 87:00 - 87:30 it's a little bit of a gray area because we say you know when the smoke detector goes off get outside and don't re-enter but if if you have a person that doesn't understand how to get out you got to come up with that pre-fire plan at your house to make sure that you know everybody knows where they're going to go and what they're going to do the last thing you want is you know mom and dad going for child you want one adult one parent getting outside so if something happens at least one parent survives the fire so appoint somebody to be responsible for that person make sure when you get outside that someone's still with that person because you don't want you know
• 87:30 - 88:00 anybody wandering off uh smoke detectors uh everybody has them hopefully they work for everybody uh we're all pretty guilty of the fact of we don't change the batteries till they beep in the middle of the night and then we either break them or rip batteries out many studies out there basically when you go to sleep your nose goes to sleep by time you smell the smoke it may be too late so be proactive in your house change your smoke detector batteries the uh the battery companies say when you change your clocks change your batteries that's a little excessive but try to do it at least once a year and you know if
• 88:00 - 88:30 there are autistic people you know make sure they're outside their bedroom make sure they have one inside their bedroom and make sure you found it so that they know what it sounds like so that when it does go off and it is loud they're not scared and they don't hide they know how to get outside and we pray we should be practicing fire drills at least two times a year so that you know we know how to get out we know the past we know what to do and then just do you know teach the basic fire safety stop drop and roll we stop drop and roll when we are on fire i been doing this job for many years a lot of kids say you stop dropping rolling the house is on fire
• 88:30 - 89:00 it's not when the house is on fire it's when you're on fire with the house on fire you get outside right um touching the door with the back of the hand you know so they can feel if the door is hot or warm and then teaching that if it is hot or warm to not go out the door but potentially go out the window but here again that's another teaching um experiment that you have to do to teach them how to open the window and how to get out the window um so depending on you know where where the person may be on the spectrum you have to adapt that and here again practicing a fire drill we'll we'll teach everybody what to do um once again visit the fire station and
• 89:00 - 89:30 then one of the biggest things that's just prevention you know lock up the matches and lighters put safety covers over over the stove knobs stoves now i have a lot of the push buttons things but you know a lot of people don't think anything's bad is going to happen until something bad does happen we do a juvenile fire setter uh course here for juveniles that have started fires and it's it's incredible the amount of young kids from five to you know just even caught 15 teenagers who have started fires just because they came across matches and lighters that
• 89:30 - 90:00 you know parents left out and they were bored and they started something on fire and it got bigger and bigger so you got to be proactive pick those things up keep those things out of reach keep them in a locked box be proactive for any of those hazards that are around so once again we're doing everything virtually here's my contact information feel free to give me a call shoot me an email like i said we have the capabilities through virtual to walk around a fire truck show you lights sirens show you bunker gear do education
• 90:00 - 90:30 we're here to help you obviously it's the new 2020 but you know we're here and we have the capabilities to uh get the information out so thank you for your time and please reach out if you need me appreciate it excellent thank you jeff thank you your collaboration and la our last uh organization and certainly not least we have orianna de leon the injury prevention coordinator for safe kids of palm beach county hi good afternoon everyone it's nice to
• 90:30 - 91:00 be here so nice to see so many resources out there available for um these families and children so very very happy to be here thank you jackie for having us um next slide so we are safe kids of palm beach county we are a injury prevention program we are part of community partners of south florida and we are fully funded by the children's services council next slide please
• 91:00 - 91:30 okay uh safe kits our mission is to keep all kids safe from preventable injuries as preventable injuries is the number one killer of children in the united states uh next line and you can next slides okay um safe kids palm beach county we focus like i mentioned and um different types of programs to try to prevent injuries um educate the community of what they can do
• 91:30 - 92:00 um to prevent their children from having any injuries so we focus on road safety home safety sport safety we have a ton of information families can also go on to safe safe kidsworldwide.org and also go in there and find home safety information if the family needs to know how to you know pay baby-proof their homes there's a ton of information there on home checklist that will go over all of this information
• 92:00 - 92:30 um and also one of our biggest programs is child passenger safety and some of the calls that we get sometimes from families of children with autism is that they're having challenges keeping their child um properly restrained restrained sorry because they either uncle hold their seeds or um they know how to remove their seatbelts and things like that we do have a couple of uh technicians that are special needs
• 92:30 - 93:00 certified that if the families have any questions we can refer them to one of them and have and help the families with what should be the next step and which seat will be best for their child to keep them properly properly restrained in the car um another thing that i want to mention uh we have our safe kids program and we provide affordable car seats to the community for a donation fee of 35 also if a family needs a car seat check we
• 93:00 - 93:30 are able to do that at no cost to the family at this time we are doing virtually pre-covet we have several um um stations around uh throughout palm beach county to help with parents checking their car seats however now physically we are doing everything virtually that the family has any questions in regards to that please um have us give us a call um and also if families have any questions regarding
• 93:30 - 94:00 um scenes for their children with autism if they're having challenges keeping them probably restrained they can also contact the national center for the safe transportation of children with um special health health care needs and then we'll be able to provide them with more information um next slide and we do have our facebook page so please feel free to share with your families we are constantly updating information um to provide to families on
• 94:00 - 94:30 how people how to keep their children skating at home yes i and we are a small but mighty team we cover the whole uh entire county uh so we're here we're here to help so please um give your families this information help us have them contact us and we'll do the best we can to help them with their questions thank you jackie excellent thank you orianna um
• 94:30 - 95:00 most of the questions that have come through have been answered by our panelists in the chat box um so i would encourage you to kind of scroll through to see what has been asked and answered our panelists have been really good about answering the questions um are there any if there are any last minute questions right now we can you can put them in the chat box otherwise i will hand this back over to dr scott to just say thank you to all of our our
• 95:00 - 95:30 attendees and our presenters today um and in just a second we just had a question come through so where is the best place to go for resources in palm beach county um for autism-related resources i would encourage you to contact us at fau card our contact information is up here um that is primarily what we do is helping families to get connected with different resources and supports um across kind of the gamut of topics
• 95:30 - 96:00 whether it's educational healthcare behavior any of those things i do do encourage you to reach out to card and we'll get you set up with a clinician to provide support great thank you jackie and i want to thank all the agency representatives that participated today thank you and our sponsors rails jewish family services and
• 96:00 - 96:30 butterfly effects uh it's great to hear the good work that's happening there the fau card program has taken the lead statewide and nationally in terms of promoting safety for children with autism this is a huge a huge issue we the data on this are not as sharp as they need to be most death certificates won't indicate if a child has autism so we really don't know um if we did know i think we'd be much more
• 96:30 - 97:00 scared than what we are but parents who are informed who are paying attention who are doing the right things getting the right support they they need not be unduly freaked out about about this kind of thing so uh let me restate if you're having any issues related to the safety of your child please work with your card specialist contact me you see the number on the screen and we'll be happy to do all that we can do to help you um maintain the safety of your
• 97:00 - 97:30 loved one with with autism so and realize that the things you do to keep your child with autism safe will keep other children safe as well and thinking along those lines will help everybody stay stay safer so thank you all for participating and we'll see you in not too far down the road maybe face to face as well thank you
• 97:30 - 98:00 [Music] you