The AAP Ignores Autism this Annum

From John Gilmore at A-CHAMP

The American Academy of Pediatrics is having it's annual convention in Washington DC starting Saturday, Oct. 8. More than 6,000 pediatricians will gather to discuss and learn more about what is important to them. Given the crushing surge in the number of children's lives impacted by autism, now approaching 1 out of 80 boys in the US, a rational person would think this modern plague will no doubt be a top priority at the many educational seminars at the convention.

Autism, though, doesn't seem to be among the AAP’s priorities, according to the AAP convention website (proudly sponoserd by a grant from Astra Zeneca). More than 350 educational sessions are planned. How many do you think are about autism? 30? 15? 5?.

Try 1.

And that session is about the effectiveness of an anesthetic for use on kids with ASD.

For an abstract of the study and others presented at the convention check here. (Sponsored by Shire, your ADHD Support Company)

New treatments? No. Mercury in Vaccines? Is this an issue? Epidemiology? What epidemic? Autistic enterocolitis? Nope. Chelation? Please... Nothing new.

That's why a whole bunch of parents, friends and family of kids with autism are going down to Washington on October 7 and 8 to not only educate our lawmakers on Friday but to educate the physicians who are doing nothing to help our kids.

Please join us. For more info see www.nationalforce.org

This really surprised me.

With ALL that has happened this year, with 1 in 250 diagnosed with Autism, with a child dieing during chelation, with the Senate investigating the only CDC study on vaccines relationship to autism, with parents marching on Washington, with David Kirby's book, with chelation success stories being shown almost weekly on local television... etc. etc... the only question the AAP is interested in is, how to best anesthetize these kids.

Hubris.

UPDATE: Teresa, Queen of Research, has found that the AAP WILL be offering a few seminars on autism, or issues that are associated with Autism. None on chelation, which would make me happy, but enough to know that they not ignoring us. I feel much better as I considered the idea that they were not even going to address the basics of autism this year as a huge slide backward in trying to get docs to really study and treat our kids.

Here is the list she came up with:

Council on Children With Disabilities H108
Saturday, October 08, 2005 8:00 AM-12:00 PM

Update on the Biology of the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

8:00 am - 8:10 am
Welcome
-Paul Lipkin, MD, FAAP, Section Chairperson
-Diane R. Edwards, MD, FAAP, Program Chairperson

8:10 am - 9:10 am
The Genetics of Autism
-Ellen Roy Elias, MD, FAAP



9:10 am - 10:10 am

Atypical Autism: Recognizing and Managing the Child with High
Functioning Autism and Asperger Syndrome F290
Sunday, October 09, 2005 5:00 PM-5:50 PM

HFA and AS, different labels or different entities? The answer is controversial. This session will address characteristics of each and how they are similar and different in regards to clinical presentation, diagnostic criteria, screening, diagnosis and management. Upon completion of this session, participants will be
able to:

· List the diagnostic criteria for HFA and AS
· Generate a differential diagnosis for HFA/AS
· Describe the screening and evaluation process
· Describe the important components in management

Speaker(s): Chris Plauche Johnson MD, MEd, FAAP

Track(s): Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics



Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)X307
Monday, October 10, 2005 6:45 AM-7:45 AM

Case discussions will be used to illustrate unique challenges in the diagnosis, differential diagnosis and management of children with ASD. In addition to cases prepared by the speaker, cases from practice are welcome. Upon completion of this session, participants will:

· Be aware of existing challenges in screening and diagnosis
· Describe management of challenging behaviors and/or co-morbid health issues
· Adopt a strategy for working with families who choose non-traditional interventions

Speaker(s): Chris Plauche Johnson MD, MEd, FAAP

Track(s): Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics



Nexus on Environmental Health H313
Monday, October 10, 2005 9:00 AM-12:00 PM

9:00 AM - 9:40 AM:
Thermometers to Fish: What Every Pediatrician Needs to Know About Mercury
Christine Johnson, MD

9:40 AM - 10:20 AM
Common Environmental Health Problems: Case Studies
Christine Johnson, MD
James R. Roberts, MD, MPH

10:20 AM - 11:00 AM
Finding and Managing the Child With an Elevated Blood Lead Level
James R. Roberts, MD, MPH

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Annual Business Meeting and Box Lunch

Speaker(s): Christine L. Johnson MD ,James R. Roberts MD, MPH, FAAP



Vaccine Update: The Next 1000 Days
S356
Monday, October 10, 2005 1:30 PM-3:30 PM
The U.S. immunization program has been enormously successful in improving the health of infants, children and adolescents. The near future holds hope for the program to be raised to the next level with the possible addition of conjugated meningococcal, Tdap, rotavirus, MMRV and human papillomavirus vaccines to the childhood and adolescent immunization schedule. The objectives of this seminar are to review the current program, discuss vaccines and vaccine recommendations on the horizon, and outline major policy and service issues these changes will bring.

Speaker(s): Larry K. Pickering MD, FAAP ,Margaret B. Rennels MD, FAAP

Track(s): Infectious Disease



Vaccine Safety Issues S376
Monday, October 10, 2005 4:00 PM-6:00 PM
This seminar will review: current vaccine safety issues; the nature and scope of vaccine hesitancy and its management in primary care; the components of the US vaccine safety system; school entry laws and immunization exemptions; the balance between preserving individual choice and protecting the public health and the need to sustain a broad immunization consensus to achieve the full benefits of modern
vaccinology.

Speaker(s): Edgar K. Marcuse MD, MPH, FAAP ,Walter A. Orenstein MD, FAAP

Track(s): Infectious Disease



Etiology and Management of Autism
S483
Tuesday, October 11, 2005 4:00 PM-6:00 PM

This seminar will review standard criteria for the diagnosis of the autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and will discuss management. ASD children may nor present with indicators of ill health in the same manner as typically developing children and the "Red Flags" suggesting potentially significant medical conditions will be discussed. Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to:

1) Recognize the key core diagnostic characteristics of ASD
2) Be aware of appropriate studies to assist diagnosis
3) Identify atypical symptoms of ill health in ASD children
4) Identify criteria for appropriate interventional strategies
5) Evaluate effectiveness of treatment plans

Speaker(s): Adrian Sandler MD, FAAP ,Margaret L. Bauman MD, FAAP

Track(s): Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics



The Epidemiology of Autism-Is there an epidemic?
-Craig Newschaffer, PhD

10:10 am - 10:30 am
Questions & Answers

10:30 am - 10:45 am
Break

10:45 am - 11:15 am
Arnold J. Capute Award Presentation
Introduction: Fred Palmer, MD, FAAP, Capute Award Committee Chairperson
Recipient: Pasquale J. Accardo, MD, FAAP

11:15 am - 12:00 Noon
Section Business Meeting

Update from Baton Rouge

I work for the Baton Rouge Business Report in my real life, as my real job. Working for a news agency during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath has been very interesting to say the least and I thought it was interesting working for a hotel in the wake of Hurricane Andrew!

Many of you have written and asked how things in Baton Rouge, LA have changed with the passing of the storm. The storm hasn't full passed. The ramifications of it are everywhere. Our editor in chief, JR Ball, has summed up to a tee how our lives have been changed forever down here in the Red Stick.

If you want to read more on the local impact of Hurricane Katrina, visit www.businessreport.com. I am proud of the coverage they have given in this issue to what has become one of the most profound things to ever impact my view of life.

After you read this, think about how your family with your children would have survived with whatever you could throw in a car or pack in a little bag to evacuate.

One of the families I met this week from New Orleans in a shelter in Thibodeaux, LA was a single mother of four children ages 10-13 with two children with autism. They had survived the ordeal at the Convention Center by sitting in a corner and holding hands in the dark. They had no food or water for days. She has nothing to go home to and no one to help her. Her home was under water. The Walmart where she worked as a stock clerk was destroyed by looting and floodwaters.

We were there to pick up another two families when we found her and we didn't have room to pick them up and bring them with us. She came out to the car when we were leaving and I had given her our information and told her we would do our best to get back in touch with her. Then I gave her an ice cold Coke from the ice chest in the car.

She was tired and weary but was not broken. She is determined to make a new life for herself and for her children.

Tears were rolling down her face as she sipped on the Coke and they were rolling down mine too because I couldn't get them all in the car. I made her promise me that she would stay in touch with us. We are trying to track her through the Red Cross now.

I don't know how some people do it.

Life goes on and your world has probably gotten back to normal after the media onslaught of the last two weeks. Our recovery down here on the Gulf Coast is going to take much longer than that.

Shelley Hendrix Reynolds
President, Unlocking Autism
www.unlockingautism.org

On Hiatus

Chandler started school this week and I have been wrapped up in getting him adjusted with his new life and getting his teachers and his aid up to date with all his little idiosyncrasies.

He loves school by the way. I am thrilled!

Will get back to blogging in a few days when he gets settled in.

Surfer's Healing

If you have not heard of Surfer's Healing, you gotta.


These are a few pictures from their latest event in New York.


When Chandler is old enough, we are so there.

Katrina Magnets

From AutismLink.org:

Help Us Help Hurricane Katrina's Families with Autism!



Only $5 each (includes shipping!) 100% of the proceeds from yoru purchase will go to aiding hurricane victims with autism at Camp Yocona!! Camp Yocona is providing shelter, food (gluten free/casein free too!), and stability to the most vulnerable of Katrina's victims!

Flicker Of Light

From my friend Kel:

Ginger,

I have started a website for the Katrina Survivors called www.flicker-of-light.com. The purpose of this site is to reunite the missing family members, pen pals, and for folks to go to great links that can help.

Yesterday I went and talked to the survivors one on one, and most of them were telling me they're hopeless in finding their family members. So I started to take names of the missing, and my pen pal club has now become a missing persons board too!

In less than 24 hours I have reunited a 71 year old woman with her son, daughter in law and 3 grandaughters the youngest being 1 month old. When one of her grand babies called me today from Houston. She had told me that they all thought for sure that she had died in the flood as she didn't want to leave her home. The story she told me was a living hell. So I feel blessed that I was able to help her out so much.

I have been contacted by State organizations that are going to be getting the message out there about Flicker of Light. So if you have any links to put on there I would much appreciate that.

I just want to get the word out and I thank you for listening.

Kel

Coyote Blog has made observations about the differences between the top-down and the bottom-up efforts to help Katrina Victims. In my view, it is the bottom-up stories that are the most beautiful.

Thanks to Dan Olmsted

Thanks to Dan Olmsted for writing about me and my views on Leo Kanners big mistake this week in his column. For those of you who are new to the site, welcome. The piece that Olmsted referred to, "In Defense of my Ire" can be found here in its entirety.

The Age of Autism: One angry mom
By Dan Olmsted Sep 7, 2005, 14:55 GMT

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Ginger Taylor of Los Angeles describes herself as 'a thirty-something wife of the nicest man alive and mother to the two cutest boys ever. I am a former Johns Hopkins-educated family therapist, and also a Web designer. Most importantly I am a mom. Chandler, born in March `02, is autistic, and Webster, born in Sept. `00, is a mostly typical boy, with a few Autism Spectrum Disorder traits.'

When Taylor saw the recent Age of Autism columns on the first child diagnosed with autism -- and how he appeared to improve after treatment with gold salts in 1947 -- she got mad. As a Hopkins alumnae and a family therapist, she could not believe that doctors at Johns Hopkins, where that first child was diagnosed, had somehow missed the possible connection.

Leo Kanner, the leading child psychiatrist of his day, first diagnosed autism in a child known as Donald T., who came to see him at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in 1938 at age five. Seven years later, Donald had a life-threatening attack of juvenile arthritis and was treated with gold salts at the Campbell Clinic in Memphis.

That is according to Donald`s brother, who still lives in the small Mississippi town where the two grew up. Donald also lives there, but has not responded to our request for an interview.

Following are excerpts of a post by Taylor on her blog, adventuresinautism.blogspot.com

--

Looking around, I seem to be the only one who is so upset with Kanner for not giving Donald`s medical treatment the consideration it deserved in assessing his considerable improvement from his 'nervous condition.' I think my anger at him for this stems more from a professional place than the place of a parent, although the two together are a potent combination.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I am a former marriage and family therapist and earned my master`s degree at Johns Hopkins. I also worked there as a grad student, doing my practicum in the psychiatry department in an outpatient program for adolescent substance abusers.

With my professional history, I feel able to put myself in Kanner`s shoes, in a basic way, in that I treated 12-year-olds at Hopkins, and I know what a huge responsibility it is. My criticism of him, I believe, is founded because I know how irresponsible it would have been for me if I had done a history on a patient, and not to included something so vital as the near death, extensive medical treatment and subsequent vast improvement of two very serious medical conditions, of said patient.

If I took patient histories this seriously as a 27-year-old grad student getting her master`s, then Leo Kanner, seasoned medical doctor and Psychiatrist, sure should have taken it all the more seriously.

If I went to the home of a patient to do follow-up after not seeing him for a few years, and noted that he had managed to kick heroin during a break in drug treatment, after a change in living arrangements and after a three-month hospitalization for a life-threatening illness, and I only reported the great living arrangement that he was in, I would not be doing my job. It could end up harming the patient, his family and heroin users everywhere who could be offered a treatment that might have stemmed from whatever medical treatment could have sped his recovery.

Is there a new medical treatment that can help heroin users kick the habit? Who knows? Ginger didn`t write it down, so no one looked into it.

Even if the family had not mentioned the hospitalization or attributed his recovery to it at the time, it would still be my responsibility to get ahold of his medical records even if only to assure continuity of care. This would be so much more true of Dr. Kanner as he defined autism and therefore took responsibility for every aspect of the diagnosis and all of the subjects that he took under his care. Add to the fact that he was a doctor at Hopkins in the first half of the 20th century, when doctors were considered godlike and few people questioned them, and his breach becomes all the more egregious.

In defense of Kanner, I don`t think that he was a heartless parent-basher and he should not be placed any where near (Bruno) Bettelheim, who destroyed so many lives and families. I just don`t think that he was thorough enough at a moment where it really, really counted. He made a freshman mistake that cost many people dearly and left the door open for Bettelheim (who blamed parents for their children`s autism).

'In further defense of Kanner, I have not read his follow-up paper, and I am taking the word of (The Age of Autism) and others who have written about it. I tried to read it last week but got so emotional about what happened to these children and couldn`t continue. I will reserve the right to amend my judgment of Kanner after I get the guts to read his paper.

In respect to the gold salts, I did not read the discussion of how the gold salts treatment may have impacted Donald`s 'nervous condition' as a recommendation for parents to run out and try gold on their children, but merely as a discussion of how gold may have made a change in this specific case and what that might tell us about autism and its potential treatments. What I took away was not that gold could mitigate my son`s autistic symptoms, but that Donald`s treatment represents another case that points to the toxicological and autoimmune features of autism.

I don`t see gold as the answer to my son`s autism any more than I see kitchen mold as the answer to his ear infection. But the happy accident of a moldy petri dish in 1928 has led to hundreds of antibiotics to treat everything from a skinned knee to anthrax. The happy accident of Donald`s recovery might have meant the same for autism, had Kanner written it down.

If it had come to the attention of the medical community that gold salts had improved autism, then autism may have been recognized as an autoimmune disorder long before the 21st century. It may have also have shed light on how the body`s immune system works and how autoimmune responses are triggered, giving immunologists information that could have moved the entire field forward. It could have led to a better understanding of toxicology and how heavy metals could contribute to neurological disorders, and lead may have been removed from paint decades earlier than it was.

At the very least, we might know what autism, in all its forms, is by now.

Would any of these things have happened? Who knows? Leo didn`t write it down.

This ongoing series on the roots and rise of autism welcomes reader comment. E-mail: dolmsted@upi.com.

How You Can Help

So many of you have already given donations and offered your homes and everything else but you are wanting to know ways that you can help on a greater scale.

We have some ideas for you below:

FIRST:

Many of the refugees are now being moved out and relocated to other parts of the country where they will be in shelters managed by the Red Cross. If you will have a Red Cross shelter in your community, contact your local Red Cross to find out if you can volunteer. Once you are trained or processed and allowed access to the shelter you can look for families or adults that might need our community's assistance. If you don't find anyone in the shelter with autism, make sure that you leave contact information so that they can find you after your shift is completed.

Also, if you don't find a shelter with a person with autism, there will be plenty for you to do and your help is needed.

IF YOU FIND A FAMILY WITH AUTISM:

a) Ask if they have resources where they can go to live? Family in another state that can help them transition? Do they need help getting there with airplane tickets, bus tickets, etc?

b) If they don't have any resources available they have THREE options:

1) They may relocate from the shelter to the camp in Mississippi that Peg Pickering and her people have so graciously coordinated. Contact information to let them know that resource exists is on our site at www.unlockingautism.org.

2) They may relocate to another area of the country. We need to know the top three areas where they would like to go so we can see if we have host families in those cities.

3) They can find an apartment in the area where they have been staying and we will assist with the first month's rent and/or deposit as needed.

We will provide this to as many people as we can as long as we have the funds available.

ONCE A FAMILY IS SETTLED:

Leaders in your area will be getting in touch with you to let you know when a family has moved into your area. They will be organizing a pantry and basic home furnishings stocking party as needed. The families needs all vary. Keep in mind that we are all different shapes, different sizes and our kids all have different needs.

To recap:

Order of priority:

FIND THEM

SHELTER

FOOD

CLOTHING


Once these people have an address, we can help get things to them but finding them first is critical. Giving them an address is the next best thing we can all do.

We have a report from Dr. Jeanette Gallagher who volunteered as a Red Cross volunteer today in Houston. Dr. Gallagher is from Kenner, LA and is currently displaced herself but she volunteered to look for families in the shelters near her. She found two families. She reports that the conditions are nice and that for families with children with autism, they have provided partitions to give them as much privacy as possible. There are air mattresses and things are clean and organized.

Shifts change every 8 hours just like nursing shifts so if you drop off information at the start of one shift, it may or may not be there when the next shift takes over. If you have a fax from your home you can send it at the beginning of each shift or call to make sure they are aware that you are there as a resource to connect them back to their community.

Thanks for being patient as we move through this. We have never done this before and are doing our best to keep it all straight and figure out what needs to be done! Keep your ideas coming!!!!!

The Unlocking Autism Staff

AutismCares.org

The efforts of Unlocking Autism have grown to include most of the national autism organizations and they have now set up a central web site to corrdinate the project.

http://www.AutismCares.org

If you have a house or services to offer, please register it there.

If you are interested in helping us out with families reloacating to Los Angeles, please write to me at katrina@adventuresinautism.com.

Here is the latest from Unlocking Autism:

After speaking with state officials this morning, we have learned that in the state of Louisiana alone, early estimates indicate that there are a minimum of 900 children with autism that have been displaced and that is simply based on the number of children in public schools. The five parishes in Louisiana that were hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina were homes to more than 1/3 of the children in Louisiana with autism. Those parishes include: St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany.

900 Children

This only accounts for children ages 3-22 in the state of Louisiana diagnosed with autism and does not include any child in a private school, home based educational program, under the age of 3 or any adults.

The needs here are massive.

The thing that we have realized over the last 48 hours in counseling families is that the trauma is overwhelming. They are in shock. It is difficult to get them to focus on the fact that they need shelter, clothing and food and water before they even start to think about schools and therapists and everything else that comes with having a family member that has autism.

We cannot tell you how much we appreciate everyone wanting to open their homes to help relocate these families. Please be patient with us. Many of these families that we have talked to want to stay in the area to see if they can eventually get back to their house to see if any photos survived or their grandma's necklace or something.

We have many state agencies that are working to help us identify families as they come.

We just wanted to send this information out to you as our community today so that you would understand that magnitude of this situation.

And the thing that is boggling our minds is that this does not include the number of children displaced in Mississippi or Alabama as a result of this catastrophe.

Unlocking Autism

Katrina: Missing Autistic Children

13 Year-Old Girl Missing

From CNN:

Megan Carter is 13 years old, unable to speak, and was last seen with her caregiver Linda Jones in Kenner, LA (Near N.O. Intl Airport). Megan is non-verbal, and not toilet-trained (wears pull-ups). She cannot feed herself, but likes any kind of food; particularly milk. She does not like
candy or chips.

Her mother is currently disabled and in the hospital, and her relatives are safe in Greenville MS. She is in the Red Cross's database and other lists. If you have any information, please call her relatives at 662-334-4770.

For her picture, please see: http://www.autisminfo.com/Katrina3.htm:

UPDATE: MEGAN HAS BEEN FOUND!!

We just found out that Megan Carter has been located in Texas with her caregiver. She is safe, doing fine, and is ready to be reunited with her family - what great news!

Brad
AutismInfo.com

• • •

Missing 16 Year-Old Boy

Scott Gammage, Co-President of the Autism Society of Greater Tarrant County, went personally to all the shelters in Tarrant County (Fort Worth area) to see if there are any families with autism who need help. We have found a mother here in Fort Worth who is searching for her son with autism.

The mother Adrian Collins is at the Will Rogers Complex in Fort Worth. She is from New Orleans. Her son Eric Collins has autism and is 16 yrs. old. He is verbal and does pretty well with routine and his meds.(concerta, resperidol). She was concerned that he probably has no meds. Adrian thinks he is with his older brother Kennith Collins Jr. and his wife Karen Collins. They were also from New Orleans. She has no idea where they may have been taken but is confident they were bused out of New Orleans. It is an inconceivable understatement to say she was worried about them.

Adrian is also disabled from a stroke a few years back. She was gracious and grateful that someone here would be concerned.

Eric Collins birthday 12/21/88 Kennith Collins birthday 4/17/75 - Karen Collins

We are also searching through the Red Cross data bank to see if we can locate him. If anyone has any way to check with other shelters for Eric we would be most appreciative.

Marianna Bond, Autism Society of Greater Tarrant County 817-498-6133

• • •

Looses Touch With 21 Year-Old Son By Julie Goodman for The Clarion-Ledger http://tinyurl.com/9hnot

LAUREL — Sharoyn Kehlor held up a creased photograph of her son, Michael, standing in front of a Christmas tree at his group home in Kenner, La.

"Hmmm," she said, kissing his image. "My boy."

Kehlor, who has joined more than 700 other evacuees at a shelter here in Laurel run by the American Red Cross, has not talked to her son since Aug. 26 when Hurricane Katrina barreled into their lives.

Michael is 21 but with autism functions more as a 5-year-old and is used to speaking with his mother by phone every night and seeing her every Wednesday.

But instead of looking forward to her next visit, Kehlor, 55, is shuffling through her new home — the fairgrounds where rodeos are ordinarily held — navigating with a cane around barefoot children, pregnant women and armed men in fatigues.

Sharoyn Kehlor and her husband Michael sit on a cot at a Laurel shelter for Hurricane Katrina evacuees. The couple have not been able to locate their son.

She is surrounded by large fans, Coke machines and cots, and finds herself talking over an occasional loud-speaker announcement, sometimes delivered in Spanish.

Instead of listening to Michael go on about his beloved special needs bus or his favorite holiday, Halloween, she is surrounded by talk about a cot shortage, missing persons and shower time — women at even hours, men at odd.

She does not know where her son is, and she's been crying like crazy, she said.

The Friday before Katrina struck, her son's group home evacuated, supposedly transporting residents to Baton Rouge or Gonzales, La.

It was painful for her, she said, but she had to evacuate without him, knowing that the shelter where she and her husband would land would not be able to provide the 119 pills her son has to take every week, many for behavioral problems and ulcerative colitis.

She was given an emergency contact number for her son, but the information got lost in the shuffle.

Full report here: http://tinyurl.com/9hnot

Unlocking Autism to Help Katrina Victims

(bumped to top)

Help Katrina victims with Autism

Update: Special Edition of The Power of ONE! on Autism One Radio Saturday, September 3rd, beginning at 3:00 pm ET. Shelley Hendrix, president, and Nancy Cale, vice president of Unlocking Autism discuss efforts to help families of children with an autism spectrum disorder whose lives have been badly disrupted by the tragedy in the South.


Original Post: In view of the tremendous needs of families with children on the autism spectrum in the Gulf area hit by the hurricane, Unlocking Autism has set up our website to accept donations for these specific needs.

Shelley Reynolds, UA President, lives in Baton Rouge as well as several other UA volunteers. We also have a UA State Rep who lives just outside of New Orleans. These contacts will enable us to find needs and distribute funds to those with children with autism.

If you would like to specifically help these families you may do so by going to www.UnlockingAutism.Org and click on Gulf Disaster Relief. Unlocking Autism is a non profit (501 c 3) organization.

Thank you for your help in this disaster situation. Please remember to pray for all those affected and the safety and health of all residents and those serving in rescue and relief.

Nancy H Cale
Vice President, Unlocking Autism
770.463.4475 home office
866.366.3361 UA Office
www.unlockingautism.org
NanCale@aol.com


UPDATE: From Shelley Hendrix Reynolds with Unlocking Autism

Unlocking Autism has set up a collection to help with the Gulf Coast region relief for families that are stranded as refugees in Southeast Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Many of these families will not be able to return to their homes for a long time, if then and many will have to relocate elsewhere. Many were only able to leave with whatever they could get into their cars. Most will not have a job to return to unless they are with a larger company that can move them to satellite offices.

The population of Baton Rouge is expected to grow by 500,000 people by the end of the week.

Electricity is still out in many places, phone service (cell and land) is spotty at best and it takes a long time to get phone calls in and out.

They are issuing a dusk to dawn curfew everywhere and looting issues have spread to Baton Rouge now. It is pretty chaotic because the streets here are full of cars. I have never seen anything like this in my life. We have had hurricanes and messes before but this is just nuts.

We are working to reach people who are in contact with families who have children and adults with autism in their family who need assistance. Please do not send us the names of people you know from this area unless you currently know where they are and have a means to locate them. We might have known where they were this time last week, but we don't know where they are now. Our website will be updated later tonight to receive this information.

We are collecting money through our site at www.unlockingautism.org to assist with getting them supplies, paying for hotel rooms, helping them find accommodations to rent housing, buying supplies to help accommodate any school programs.

My family has been really lucky. Liam and Mairin are staying with their daddy and he has electricity and things are ok. Liam doesn't know why he can't go to my house which has him a little confused and it is because the backyard is full of power lines...I can't afford to have him run back there to try and get on the swingset...the lines are draped across the chainlink metal fence. But I cannot imagine trying to handle this if we were evacuees from New Orleans and trying to stay put in a shelter with a child with autism with thousands of other people in there with me.

They have not been able to contain the levees and are predicting that it will be a minimum of 3 months before people can go back into some areas of New Orleans. They are trying to block the leak with a barge and by bringing in sections of the Twin Span bridges that fell into the lake, but they are saying that they can't seem to get that to work.

They are putting people with special needs in the LSU Fieldhouse here in Baton Rouge but I have not been able to get there to find out what that all entails and which special needs those may be. We are also in contact with the East Baton Rouge Parish School System to find out if they are enrolling new children with autism because everyone is coming here to enroll their kids in school.

We will keep you apprised of the situation as we can get you information. Thank you all for all of your support and your prayers. Please keep praying for those people still trapped in New Orleans. There are people down there who need prayers for more than just shelter, they need prayers for their lives.

We love you all...thank you for your support.

Shelley


Update: If autism is not your thing, lots more charities here and here.

Julie and Eric

When you’re growing up, there’s at least one person who will make a drastic impact on your life. My brother, Eric, is the one who stands out.

Small Business Steps Up for Autistic Kids

From my beautiful friend Brynn:

Ginger~
I'm donating $1 per letter sold from 'My Love's Letters' (see link below to my CraigsList posting) to the hurricane victims and can't imagine a better place for this to go, so if you know anyone who might be interested in getting hand painted wall letters for their kids then please spread the word :-)Here's the link to my CraigsList posting:
http://losangeles.craigslist.org/bab/94791124.html

Love you and thanks for alerting us to the specific challenges that these families are facing - I just didn't even think of how this would effect families with autistic children....
Much love~
Brynn
http://www.mylovesletters.shutterfly.com

Go buy her beautiful, and they are beautiful, letters for your child's room.

So who else? Come on. You have a business don't you?