'Agricultural specialisterne': rural employment revolution for those with Autism

[Visionary7903]

In May 2008, the Lerner School for Autism and Debra Ann November Wing, at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital opened. It is a 24,000 square foot single-story building - part of the Hospital’s Shaker Heights campus. The $8 million project was designed by Cleveland-based healthcare architects and engineers Westlake Reed Leskosky. The Lerner School for Autism is a chartered, non-public day school, certified by the State of Ohio, that serves about 100 students from diagnosis to age 22. With a staff of 100, some specialists there help the growing number of older students with Autism Spectrum Disorder transition into adulthood through vocational training and services.

As Phil LiBassi writes in his 2009 article on the project, Formulating a Plan, what is innovative about the educational facility is the way it is uniquely integrated within the healthcare system…

…Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Autism is innovative in its integration of a clinical and educational facility within a hospital setting, and in the design of its environment to support behavioral and sensory progress. As such, it serves as a model for how healthcare and community organizations can respond to the growing demand for and understanding of this highly specialized, experiential field of practice, and as a model for how to program and design environments for people with autism-a learning process even as such facilities are being built.

…The Center for Autism breaks new ground, as [Leslie Sinclair, Director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Autism] emphasizes: “Our center is unique in two key respects. Most other programs focus on only one modality-medical, research, or education. Here we have woven a clinical educational facility in a healthcare setting. This is a maverick notion-bringing clinical intervention, medication, and education for people with autism all under one roof. Secondly, we are innovative in the creation of an environment designed specifically to support behavioral and sensory progress.
"We draw upon the clinical staff of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and as a nonpublic, private charter school, are linked with both the Ohio Department of Education and the Joint Commission for Healthcare Accreditation. Thus, our school is compliant with two sets of regulations. The whole idea of our program braiding both standards together is truly different. We are proving that it can be done. We are moving clinical design forward,” continues Sinclair, who is directly responsible for the Center-based programs, outreach, research, and development…

A specialised software package like DDtrac, as mentioned in another post, may ease the burden of data collection and compliance with two sets of regulations…

…Wendy Schoppee, Director (Washington County Children’s Program)
“DDtrac has provided time, resource and staff savings in regard to ease of collecting and documenting the data as well as being able to create reports/ charts based on the data. It has made meeting some of the required documentation elements of our jobs much easier and much more cost effective. We have already been working with ddtrac on some customized reports. This has been extremely effective and helpful.”

(sources: Health Care / Research / Cleveland Clinic Foundation / Lerner School for Autism / Westlake Reed Leskosky; Formulating a Plan; http://developingmindssoftware.com/product/reporting.html)