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

[Visionary7903]

In an earlier post I wrote about the innovative nature of integrating an educational facility within a healthcare system. I was talking about the Lerner School for Autism and Debra Ann November Wing, at Cleveland Clinic Children’s Hospital, which opened in 2008.

Indeed many therapies for Autism Spectrum Disorders utilise different components in efforts to effectively treat Autistic individuals. For example, Family Focused Positive Behavior Support (FFPBS), a program that was the subject of a recent post, includes support teams as essential parts of the program…

…Generally, teams are comprised of family members, school staff and/or behavioral health center staff and others closely involved in the focus individual’s life. Anyone (e.g., neighbors, friends, siblings, medical staff, outside service providers) that you would like to invite is more than welcome to participate. If at all possible, the focus individual should attend team meetings, too…

One useful tool in terms of ensuring that all parts of a support team are working towards the same goal and are all ‘on the same page’ is a specialised software package, like DDtrac by Developing Minds Software…

…For schools, the software has immediate advantages. “It is a way of sharing information,” said [Dawn Gregg, founder and CEO of Developing Minds Software]. “Quite often these children have speech therapists and occupational therapists plus two or three aides working with them in the classroom. They’re all working toward the same goal, but if you don’t have some way of sharing the information, you may wind up working at cross-purposes.”…

Parents face many challenges when trying to get adequate educational, social and behavior interventions for their children. Many pursue home therapy and other supplemental therapies and programs in addition to school. One of the biggest challenges facing parents with special needs children is communicating effectively with the therapists and schools working with their child. We have often found that people working with our child wind up working towards different goals, which hampers progress.
One of our clients has decided to address this problem by using DDtrac across all of their child’s therapy settings, at home and at school. This way all people working with their child will have access to the same data and will stay “on the same page!”…

While sharing such information can be very useful, the security/privacy of each individual’s data is very important too…

DDtrac provides numerous safeguards to ensure the privacy of student data:
Maintain physical security of servers and back-up data
Use secure data transfer (SSL)
Strong 8 character passwords
4 data access controls
See our complete privacy policy for additional information on Developing Minds Software’s privacy practices…
…DDtrac is extensively tested to ensure it meets strict security guidelines…

(sources: West Virginia Autism Training Center (WV ATC) at Marshall University, Huntington, WV; http://developingmindssoftware.com/assets/pdf/knowIT.pdf; Parent Testimonials | DDtrac | Developing Minds Software; http://autism.ddtrac.info/about/privacy.html)