Advocacy for education of autistic children in Italy: advice

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claudia
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04 Nov 2013, 5:49 am

Hello everybody,
I have not been on Wrong Planet for a while. 3 years ago my son was diagnosed with autism and I was lucky to find this community. I had to face the lack of services in my country. I didn't give up, I studied and supported my son. I did the best I could, I risked to lose my job and my mental healt.
Now he is 6 and he is doing well, but he would do nothing without the intervention of his family.
Italy is facing a dramatic economic and moral crisis, but still I don't think this is the point.
Advocacy is a word I learnt on WP, but it's unknown here. Pity and assistance is all you can have here if you are a child with autism, and even if our law calls for integration.
You have the right to attend school with your nt peers, but teachers and aides are not skilled in special education. This causes failure in most cases and many children stay outside of classroom because they don't learn anything and annoy other children.
They leave school very soon, by age 14 some children already attend daycare centers that provide mostly assistance and try to occupy their time.
In most cases, they can't read and write.
Where to start to change this situation?
Special education in inclusive school is the only option we have here to start with.
This entails to provide skills to teachers and modify school organization to make room to special needs kids.
Consider that I have to base only on myself and I'm a mother with a job and a family, so I will start with little.
Schools should provide skills to teachers but they have no funds to do this.
I would stard to raise funds to help schools.
My idea is a scholarship for children with autism to be successful in school, I would try with 3 o 4 children to start. My goal is to show that it's worth it. I'm considering a crowdfunding platform as Indiegogo.
The advice I need is how to choose a name and comunication style for this funding. I'm not used to this kind of job and I'm sure many of you are.



AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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04 Nov 2013, 8:51 pm

claudia wrote:
. . . My idea is a scholarship for children with autism to be successful in school, I would try with 3 o 4 children to start. My goal is to show that it's worth it. I'm considering a crowdfunding platform as Indiegogo.
The advice I need is how to choose a name and comunication style for this funding. I'm not used to this kind of job and I'm sure many of you are.

Something positive, something relatively brief. Perhaps

"Many Ways To Learn"

I'm impressed by a theory I heard from Temple Grandin that people on the Autism Spectrum tend to have one of three preferred cognitive approaches (with some overlap of course):
1) abtract thinkers, like people good in math or chess, and maybe music,
2) story or narrative thinkers who tend to understand the world this way, and
3) thinkers in pictures like Temple herself.

She said kids who struggle with algebra ought to be allowed to move ahead to geometry and trigonometry.

And I've heard other people say that some people on the spectrum may not be able to speak verbally all that well, but can really type out their thoughts on a laptop. Again, the idea that a person can learn and communicate in many different ways.



claudia
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Joined: 12 Oct 2010
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05 Nov 2013, 3:46 am

I managed my son by myself, there are things I didn't know about autism in my country. It happens that 10 yo children go to mental istitutions and not to daycare centers. It' worse than I imagined. I read an account by another parent this morning. I asked the permission to translate and if it is granted, I will post here.
I know there are advocates here.



AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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05 Nov 2013, 3:15 pm

Hi, I can see how that can be really difficult if you are the only one advocating for your son. Perhaps additional family members can be best, but perhaps not the only way. I wish we had Asperger's-Autism Spectrum self-advocacy groups in many, many parts of the world, and one day we will.

Temple Grandin in that same video talked about just older, experienced teachers. That is, someone need not be a quote-unquote professional in order to be very helpful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgEAhMEgGOQ#t=274

There was also an interesting movie on HBO called "Life According To Sam" where Sam is a 13 and later a 15-year-old young man with a rare medical condition called progeria. And there are some great scenes where his parents are talking with school officials, I think helped enormously by the fact that both his parents are doctors and get respect for that reason perhaps unfairly so.

Putting autistic kids in a mental institution at age 10. That sounds just terrible and really unnecessary, and there has to be a better way.