July 24, 2023 • 42 mins
What do we know about Autism? Autism Treatment Center Program Director, Dr. Carolyn Garver tells us of hope as the Treatment Center changes lives and builds futures for all.
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Welcome to Advocacy in Motion. Weare here every week to give a vision
and a voice to nonprofit organizations andindividuals making an impact in our community.
And before I introduced our guest today, I want to thank our presenting sponsor,
Niagara. Niagara, you may know, is a leading manufacturer and distributor
of water saving plumbing products. Theirnew Stealth designed toilets save up to sixty
(00:33):
percent of water, which means upto sixty of cost savings, and that's
important for every household, but it'sespecially important to the nonprofit affordable housing projects
that they support. Saving money fora nonprofit organization is vitally important, and
Niagara is doing their part in theaffordable housing units, especially in the New
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Volunteers of America Oaks project in theOak Cliff District of Dallas. So thank
you to Niagara for joining us andfor continuing to support our program. My
guest today is doctor Carol and Garver. She is a program director for the
Autism Treatment Center. Welcome, I'mglad you can join us. Well,
thank you very much for having me. Let's start with the basics. For
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people like me and many out therethat think we know something about autism,
but we really have no clue.What is autism? Please tell us,
well, Autism is a complex developmentaldisorder. It is not a mental illness.
And I like to say that becausea lot of people kind of get
it confused. I'm not going toget technical, but it's because it's in
the DSM, which is the DiagnosticStatistical Manual, which is the bible of
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all disorders. It is. Itis included in there, but so is
intellectual disability and ADHD, and alot of people do not have. It
is not a mental illness. Youcan have a mental illness with it.
You can have what they call coexistingconditions of ADHD or obsessive compulsive, just
a lot of different things. Butautism in and of itself is not It
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is not a mental illness. Autismhas um. The issues with autism is
that individuals have a problem with communicationand not About fifty percent of individuals with
autism are nonverbal. So one ofthe things that we work really hard on
is communicating. Either would it bethrough language verbal language is better because most
people understand that, or through signlanguage or using now we use a lot
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of you know, devices, augmentativedevices. Autism also involves social issues.
Individuals with autism have a hard timein social situations. They have a hard
time sustaining conversation, starting conversations,they have a hard time making friends,
they have they have a hard timebeing around a lot of people. You
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know there, And I'm going touse the word neurotypical, which we used
to call normal neurotypical. These individualsare what we call neurodiverse. Another issue
is behavioral issues, and so theydo manifest certain issues. And what they
did when they changed the DSM diagnosisa couple you know, the category a
couple of years ago, they alsoadded sensory issues, which I was really
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glad because sensory is a huge issuewith people with autism, and I've done
a lot of work on sensory issueswith people with autism. If individuals,
if children get to have a lotof you know, support when they're younger,
because early intervention is the key.I mean, I'm talking now we
can diagnose children at the age ofone's It's called the aid ASS, which
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is the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule ARE. It's a gold standard for autism and
they can now do autism diagnosis andtoddlers, and I think one of the
things that I was we were talkingabout earlier was that it's so important to
get them involved early on in somekind of an intervention because it really can
mitigate the symptoms. The thing aboutthe sensory is if they get the support
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like occupational therapy and speech therapy,they and mitigate those symptoms of sensory issues
as they get older, so they'renot as they're not as they don't determine
as much that they're not as strongwhen they're older. So because we've done
a lot of studies, but soautism has basically social communication and behavior and
sensory issues. It is a lifelongdisability and it is not something that you
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acquire four or five years later.A lot of times kids have been diagnosed
or misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. And of course when I started in
this business, it was the statisticswere one in ten thousand, one to
two and ten thousand, okay,fifty something years ago, and it went
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from there and it went down.It went to like, you know,
one in five hundred, one intwo fifty one in you know, one
fifty one in sixty eight, onein forty six, and now it's then
it was one excuse me, onein forty two, and the CDC just
gave us one in thirty six asa statistics. So there are one out
of every thirty six individuals diagnosed withautism in the United States. Now it's
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a I hate to use the wordpandemic. I don't want to scare anybody,
but basically, a pandemic is thatsomething that's widespread and it's worldwide.
Autism is everywhere, It's in everystate. Korea, they did a big
study and they have they found onein thirty South Korea excuse me, let
me be specific in South Korea,and they found one in thirty six individuals.
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We're on the spectrum. So we'relooking at that, you know,
pretty seriously, and because that's prettyhigh. I mean, that's a pretty
high. What we call prevalence andthe prevalence of That's what CDC looks at
is the prevalence, which means thenumber of cases already existing. I happen
to do some work in epidemiology,and so the incidence, which means the
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number of new cases is also rising. About there are children in the United
States about about every twenty minutes arediagnosed with autism, and that's that's a
pretty high that's a pretty high diagnosis. The numbers have come down, dude,
to just better research, more research, and more involvement and that.
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Yeah, I'm not it's a simplequestion. Is there a cause for it?
It's not a simple question. That'sa sam But let me segue back
a little bit. I think,you know some of the things. Definitely
looking at research, Definitely looking atthe fact that people are more aware.
Awareness is really huge, being awarebecause it's so much, it's so out
there now. I mean, we'relooking at you know, sports figures,
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high high end sports figures to haveindividuals with autism. You've got you've got
musicians, you've got people you knowthere, you've got celebs, and you've
got actors, and you've also gota lot of politicians that have people in
their families with autism. So theawareness has been just has arisen, basically,
which is a good thing because wewant to know, you know,
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it does affect so many people andbecause it's such a complex disorder. There's
not one cause for autism, okay, and we really we don't know,
but we're looking at pretty much geneticsnow, we're looking at about sixty percent
is a genetic based predisistion predisposition forautism. And we're also looking at the
environment um and we're looking at aninteraction between the environment and between the genetics.
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And if you think about it,think about ADHD, and think about
diabetes, and think about asthma,it's it's it's increased everywhere in everything.
So what's affecting that? How iseverybody getting so affected by all that?
Look at our environment and you know, it's it's changing, and it's it's
affecting everybody. You know, we'vegot things that we never had before.
And we were growing up. Myparents chrise, they're gone now, but
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they grew up on meat and potatoes, but there were there were no steroids
in them, there was no youknow, preservatives in them. So they
lived a lot longer. And soI think that, you know, we
really need to look at what weyou know, jest, what we put
in our body, what we breathe, and look what we're up facing today.
It's so hard. So I really, you know, we're really looking
at the effect of the interaction betweenenvironment and between the genetics. Now you're
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autism treatment center, Where are youlocated? Were they We are the Autism
Treatment Center of Dallas. We havewe're located over off of Forest Lane between
Skillman and Plano Road, so we'rekind of in East Dallas, or not
East Dallas, but northeast Dallas.We also have a San Antonio program,
and we also have what we callan outpatient ABA clinic, a PLOD Behavior
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Analysis clinic in the Fort Worth area. Now's the treatment center was established in
nineteen seventy six, right, AndI think you I saw on your website
just a few few people there,whatever, And you've grown so much over
the years. What's the most significantthing you have seen to develop over those
years? Where you are from whereyou started to where you are now?
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Oh, a lot of things.Well, basically I got it started in
seventy six, and I started inseventy nine. So last Friday was my
forty fourth anniversary at the Autism TreatmentCenter. So that's kind of scary to
me in a way. You know, when I talk to people on the
phone and they're asking me advice orthey're asking me about whatever or referral or
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this or what do I do?And I tell them how long I've been
there, I get this pause,But It's also sort of a makes them
feel better because they feel like somebody'sFirst of all, a lot of them
don't ever get called back. Imean I get calls daily, literally,
you know, because they feel likeI and I always speak to people.
If somebody calls me, I callthem back and I give them as much
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information as I possibly can. Youknow, we can't take everybody and autism.
You know, individuals that weren't diagnosedearly on are starting to develop a
lot more complex symptoms. Then youknow, there's a lot of aggression.
Unfortunately, there's there's a lot ofoppositional defiant behavior. I don't you know,
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things are changing. I think youknow, being that we are learning
about ABA, which is applied behavioranalysis. Now that's a big change.
We've expanded our program. I meanwe have We started out with one or
two group homes. We have eighteengroup homes in the community. We also
have an outpatient Applied Behavior Analysis ABAprogram. We have a TEA Texas Education
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Agency approved school and I'll tell youwhat that is in a minute. We
have an adult services program. Wealso have an outpatient what they call an
ATCIRA, which is an autism treatmentcenter rehabilitation agency where we do speech and
OT for individuals on the spectrum.We also see other kids, We see
kids with intellectual disabilities too. Butas I was saying earlier, you have
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to have a diagnosis of autism forthe insurance to pay for those services.
Not speech and OT, but forthe ABA. I know you have a
wonderful website and know their list sevenprogram services. You mentioned a couple of
them. Then what are some ofthe services that you provide? Those are
pretty much the services we provide.We used to do diagnosis diagnostics. We
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don't do them right now because it'sjust we just don't have the capability to
do it because we're really so busy. So basically it's pretty much just residential
the ABA, the school, thetherapies, the adult services. That's right
now pretty much what we're doing.Okay, I know your mission a statement
is changing lives and building futures forall, and you put the emphasis on
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for all. Tell us a littlebit about that about how well you know,
Like I said, I we can'thelp everybody, you know, and
unfortunately, there are very there's nota lot of services in the Texas basically,
I mean there are services, buta lot of them are just completely
full, I mean just overflowing becauseof the amount of individuals on the spectrum.
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And I used to get some statisticsfrom Texas, but they don't show
they don't do them anymore. Unfortunately. You know, last I looked,
or the last I got anything fromHealth and Human Services was something like three
hundred thousand individuals on the spectrum inTexas. And you know, there are
law waiting list for services through thestate. You know, Unfortunately, it's
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very costly to you know, educatean individual or to serve an individual with
autism because of all the different servicesand supports that they need. Um.
So I think that, you know, that's a that's an issue that we
need to deal with. So it'slike I said, I try really hard
to give people a lot of resourcesas many as I can, or give
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them some ideas, and a lotof people don't know. You know,
I'll get a call from a parentand there and I'm like, well,
did you do this with the district, did you do that with the school?
Did you have you done? Andthey don't really know about it,
and so, um, I thinkmaybe we need to do a better job.
Maybe not ATC because I do thebest that I can to talk to
people and try to help them.And I talk to people all over the
state, all over the country,all over sometimes I've gotten lots of referrals
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from all over the world. Youknow, It's just it's like I said,
it's it's a it's all over theworld. It's a difficult situation because
it's complex. Tell me a littlebit about the Tree and Centered itself,
your staff and how you are andwho works there and how it works with
the kids. Well, we,of course we have certified teachers because we
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have a te Texas Education Agency approvedschool, and then we have teacher assistance
that work with us. We alsofor our for our school districts. We
also have a lot of behavioral individuals, a lot of behavior staff because our
kids do engage in a lot ofsometimes what we call challenging behaviors. So,
like we said, we have ourABA staff, and so we have
board certified behavior analysts. We havewhat we call ourbts, which are registered
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behavior technicians, and then they alsohave BTS. You get a lot of
acronyms in this world behavior technicians.And then I also have a behavior manager
who helps me with my residential andthe school and works with the ABA program,
and she's actually working on her CID, which is she wants to be
able to start evaluating and assessing kidswith autism, so she's trying to get
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that certification and she's getting a degreein that, which would be great because
then hopefully we can start doing morediagnostics because we right now we're referring our
diagnostics out the other. So thenwe also have what we call in our
residential programs. We call them DSPs, which are direct support professionals, and
there's always there's two people in ahome. There's usually an awake staff because
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we have to man those homes twentyfour seven. They cannot in These individuals
are needing all the support and thestructure. They cannot be left alone.
They have to have staff in thehomes, and it's been a challenge lately
because of the economy I don't knowwhy, and because people aren't working as
much, so we've had a realproblem trying to find staff. Then we
also have direct support professionals in ouradult program and they work with the individuals
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during the day because we have anadult day program that many of the individuals
that live in our homes go tothat program, are in that program,
and then we try to get themout in the community as much as possible.
We're really trying to do a lotof community based events. They do
a lot of volunteering. Kind ofexcited because actually two of my individuals who
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are in one of our programs excuseme, he's in our one of our
residential programs. Because we have theeighteen group homes, we also have a
program we have the maybe this ispart of the seventh we have a residential
treatment center through the Texas Department ofFamily and Protective Services. So we will
we take and service work with kidswho have been either abused or neglected or
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have been removed for their from theirhomes for whatever reason, and we do
we take care of them. Theylive with us, We put them in
school wherever they need to be.They go to our school, they can
go to public school. I thinkright now we have seven or eight or
maybe nine individual maybe even more kidsthat are going that live with us to
go to public school. Then wehave a lot of individuals that live with
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us to go to our school.So I guess it's it's kind of a
you know, whatever we need todo. It's we work on that.
And then of course at our therapy, at our therapy clinic, we have
speech and so of course we havecertified you know, speech therapists and occupational
therapists, and we do do alot of sensory occupational therapy because it's really
important because these kids do have sensoryissues. But I have two young well
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one of them just finished. Hegoes to school. They're both in public
school, but they're off for thesummer. And so though one of them,
the younger one, he actually didan internship at a local pharmacy this
summer. Not at the pharmacy,but in the drugs strike. Drugs call
him drug stories and taxes. I'mfrom New York, I don't know.
And so he did. He workedlike five weeks and hit a job coach
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somebody that was with him every dayto help him, and he did really
well and he got to make alittle bit of money. Now, this
other individual that I have, heactually is in public school. He's in
different there because some of our programsare in Garland, some are in Dallas,
they go to different school districts.This one, this young man lives
in Dallas, so he goes toa different school district and he's in a
kind of a transition program. Solast semester he went to Richland College.
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I guess they call him Dallas Collegesnow, but there needs to be Richland
because that's where we're over close by, and he worked. He went over
there two days a week for youknow, learning like activities of daily living,
you know, functional skills such ashow to maintain a checkbook, you
know how to do how to simplecooking, just different things that he did.
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And he wasn't actually enrolled in Richland, but it was at the college
that he had these classes. Andthen he works at Water Burger three days
a week, and the water Burgersright over by our office, so he
walks over there. Now he's hada few little issues, you know,
that we've had to work with.Now he doesn't even have a job coach.
He had a job coach during thesemester, but the summer he hasn't
had one. So it's been prettyexciting. I get a lot of great
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information from him because I'm pretty muchsee him every day. When I see
him all every day, my thingis is that I am there because of
these individuals, and if I can'tbe around them or get to do things
with them. Then then I'm notworth anything because I have to know,
you know, what it is thatI'm working with in order to be able
to help other people and some ofthe adults that are in our profect.
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I talked to a mom this morning. Her son was eight when I met
him. He's now fifty's going tobe fifty seven. She's going to be
ninety. She's been my friend allthese years, and she remembered that I
was doing this. I thought,I can't believe you remember. I'm so
proud of you anyway, And soI've known her, you know, forty
something years. And one of thethings I think that's interesting when people ask
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me, you know, when theyhave a young child, what's the future
look like? Well, I can'tpredict the future, obviously, but from
my experience being you know, andlong you know, being able to see
longitudinally what these individuals can accomplish,I can give him some good advice and
I can give him hope. Ithink it's so important to not lose hope
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because there are new things coming,you know, coming down the pike.
Every day, there's you know,new research. We can't lose hope.
I know it gets frustrating. It'sa labor of love and it's like you
were saying about your friends, it'svery intense. You have to be really
dedicated and you know it can bevery frustrating sometimes when you don't get what
you need or you know you can'tfind the services. Please, it's very
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important to have hope. That's oneof my big things to send home.
Well, the story about the youngpeople you were talking about is right along
your mission statement of changing lives andbuilding futures. So let me take a
break here talk about one of ourother sponsors and know and come back.
How about how people can help you, how you can get involved in some
of the events and things that you'redoing. But I want to thank prun
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Haven Energy, Wellness and Gifts forthe Soul. This is a wonderful spiritual
gift shop in downtown Richardson, andif you go in you will see free
trade merchandise from all over the countryfrom the villages. You'll see artwork from
local artists, you'll see incense,candles, all the good stuff there.
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And on the fourth Saturday of everymonth they have a psychic fair, so
you can go to Paranahn dot com. Check them out. See all that
they do there. The energy isthere, the wellness you'll see a lot
of ways that they can help there, and gifts for the soul. So
it's just a wonderful place. Andif you go in you see Alex,
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tell her dad said hello. Thisis a family business. And if you
see her the baby that sky she'llbe running the show in a few years.
So check them out Pranahn dot comor stop in downtown Richardson and say
hello to everyone. So I wantto thank them. They've been a great
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sponsored bars and really help a lotof nonprofits, so we're glad to have
them and Niagara as well. Tellme how people can help you get in
touch and what you need. Isee also that you are hiring staff and
people. Tell us about that first. Well that's what I was saying early.
Can I segway back a little bitfor a minute, Okay, I
just one of the things that I'vediscovered that I think it's very interesting to
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me with autism is that individuals withautism are very literal. Okay, I
mean very literal, and sometimes itgets it gets hard because if you explain
something and they don't understand it,the way that they think they should understand
it. It can get kind ofconfusing. So M, I try really
hard not to, you know,complicate things. I speak kind of you
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know, I try to, youknow, simplify things a lot. M.
One of my I have to tellthis, one one of my favorite
stories is one of my young menwho used to he's now aged out of
the program, but he was inour CPS custody and he was talking to
his mother one day and he said, you know, he was very verbal.
And the kids, a lot ofthe kids call me doctor Garber.
They do not have to call medoctor Garber, but you know, they
just it's a habit and they getthey're very habitual because they have a lot
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of what we call restricted interests,and so they really focus on certain things.
If they like dinosaurs, if theylike you know, if they like
moons or you know, whatever itis, they like geography, trains,
they get very fixated and they reallyknow everything and talk a lot about him.
I have a young man that thathas he's into trailers like and everything
that he builds, and he buildssome really they're really creative. I mean
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I have some individuals who are verycreative he builds these trucks out of legos,
and he always has a trailer thathe maybe he made out of a
piece of cardboard, and he alwayshas a trailer hitch. I was showing
somebody the other day. Every oneof the things that he's built me have
little trailer. They're great. Butanyway, so one day, this young
man was talking to his mom onthe phone and he said, my toe
witches and she said, your toewitches and he said, yeah, my
toe witches. And she said,well, maybe you know you've got athletes'
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foot, and you said, heshould. You know, I always wanted
to be an athlete, and Ijust, you know, I hear these
stories all the time. I toldthis. I was in the I was
talking to one of my adults oneday and I said, she talks a
lot, okay, And I askedher a question and she said nothing.
She just kind of possed him andI said, what's the matter, can't
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got your tongue? I spoke ina metaphor. She said, you know,
I don't have a cat. Sothose are kinds of things that I
don't I never thought about before,but I think about a lot now because
I don't always understand it. Thisone other young man who I he's very
special and he's the one that worksat what a Burger. When he was
in college, he decided he wantedto be a policeman. So I said
to him he came back. WhenDay says, well, I think I'm
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going to apply to the police academy. I never say no because maybe they
if they can't make it, maybethey could work in the police to whatever
it is. I never say no. Well, it depends on what it
is that I don't say no.And he said, well, I'm going
to be a police department, apolice a policeman. And I looked at
him and I said, you know, if you're a policeman, you're going
to have to make judgment calls.And he goes, what's a judgment call?
And I said, well, ifyou don't know what a judgment call
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is, that's something you're gonna haveto work on. So it's you know,
they have these ideas, but thenit's they truly don't understand, so
you kind of got to work throughit a lot. But I think it's
really important because you know, it'speople are not you know, we're literally
understand a lot of those things,but a lot of our people with autism
don't understand them. So okay,so I'm sorry you we're asking me about
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hiring on this. Yeah, Ican go back to what I did.
See, I'm pretty good now.Hiring has been. Like I said earlier,
it's been very difficult. Um,first of all, I don't know
that we can compete financially with alot of these places, you know that
other that are not with you know, working with people with on the with
disabilities, it's it's hard. Imean, it's a very high risk population.
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I mean it's there's a lot,you have to pay a lot of
attention, and it's it's a lot, and it's you have to have a
lot of patients. Um. Youknow, we've had a couple of staff
that have more than a couple thathave worked there for a really long time,
which is pretty amazing. Actually,myself and my boss, who's the
executive director, Anna Hunley, she'sbeen there forty years. I've been there
forty four years. And um uhyou la aka Tuffy Williams, who is
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my residential one of our residential coordinators, she's been there with me. The
three of us have been together forover like a hundred years. If you
add it all up, she's beenthere over forty two years. So that's
pretty amazing for a nonprofit organization.And so I think that there's been a
lot of stability. Again though alot of people come in, they try
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it out a little bit and thenthey feel like they just can't do it
because it is pretty stressful. Andand then there's people to come in and
are just grade it, you know, just love it and have never done
it, and are you really likeit? So we are looking, you
know for yes, we're hiring,we're hiring. We'll come back to the
several more times. But tell ushow people can get in touch with you
through the website or well, theycan get through the website or they can
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call the main number. Do youwant me to give them main number?
People won't remember that, No,that's right. Well, they can go
through the webbs it's UM atc Apple, Tom Charlie of o f as in
Frank t e x as dot organd basically it's UM. There's a there's
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a way that you could if youhave need information, you can send your
question through the email and then Iusually get them. We usually get them
to you know, San Antonio orDallas usually gets them. If it we're
depending on what it relates to.UM. So we can you can yes
through the website pretty and I thinkthere maybe there is an employment piece on
the website where you can look andsee what jobs are available. Okay,
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and we'll put all this up onyour website. Stuff information up on the
screen. Okay. You have severalevents. I know you have a gala
coming up. Since how can peoplehelp you tell us about some of the
EVENTE day. Well, one ofthe events that we well, this big
one that was coming up in September. It's been like thirty seven years.
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Maybe it's been a long We've doneit for many years. There was a
wonderful man, many many he's stilla wonderful man, Bobby Norris, who
came to us and he had adaughter with autism and said I want to
do something. So anyway, he'sthe one that's been the mover and shaker
of this for all these different years. And we've had different galas through all
these years. It's been pretty amazing. So it's in September. It's the
sixteenth of September. Now. Itstarted out in Fort Worth because he's kind
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of a cowboy in a rancher startedout in Fort Worth and we were there
for a number of years. Icouldn't tell you exactly, but then I
think we lost our contractor we couldn'tnegotiate a contract. So we ended up
moving it to Dallas, and sowe were we had the gala in Dallas
for many many years at a downtownhotel, and the COVID, COVID hit,
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COVID just did a number on everybody. I can't blame it on everything,
but and so we ended up goingto people decided that they wanted to
the committee decided they wanted to goback to Fort Worth so to have the
gala. So last year we hadthe gala in the stockyards, and I
think we're having it again, notthink, I know we're having it again
this year in the stockyards. Excuseme, at the Drover Hotel. Oh
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that's a fun place. Yeah it'swild down there. Yeah it's a beautiful,
beautiful hotel. Anything else going onthroughout the year that we need to
help, well, we you know, we do a lot of We've been
doing some small things. You know, it's been so hot. We haven't
done a whole lot this summer.Um, you know, we do some
golf tournaments and we do some artthings. I think this is really our
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biggest, you know, our biggestthing, and we do of course,
we do a campaign every you know, we send out a campaign every Christmas
and of course Giving Day in Northexa'sGiving Day. We always try to you
know, focus on you know,doing as well as we can. You
know, we've had some wonderful donorsthrough the years. We still do and
actually I don't mention. Yapp andAlchavon z Vaden, who he used to
(28:23):
be the you know, the conductorfor the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, have become
friends of ours and actually, um, they're going to be helping us with
the gala this year. Um he'sactually of course they live. He's in
New York now he's at the NewYork Metropolitan and um, not the opera.
(28:44):
He's at the New York Symphony.Sorry, he's not at the opera.
He doesn't sing, but he playsthe violin. And so they're going
to help us with the roundup thisyear. And they've helped us before in
the past, so that'll be exciting. We've talked about a lot of things
what do we mess Is there somethingdo you want as to know that we
haven't talked about and just tell uswhat we've missed. I've sort of abbreviated
(29:07):
everything. I just like I said, I think that I think autism is
so it's been incredible for me.I mean, I've learned a lot through
autism. It's been very good tome. I think I've learned a lot
of patients. Probably not as patientwith my family members as I am with
my kids, or I call themkids, because I've been there so long.
You know, we have individuals youknow you talked about for all.
(29:29):
We have individuals that we've had literallythrough the lifespan. One of our oldest
individuals, he is seventy five yearsold. He's maybe seventy six now,
and he came well probably about thesame time I did, you know,
forty something years ago. He's beenthere a really long time. And one
of the things I think that we'retrying to do is because autism doesn't go
(29:52):
away, and you know you don'tonce you know, once you have autism,
you have autism. You can absolutelydo millions of things. I have
an assistant, well he sort ofis an assistant to everybody. Now,
he's been there over twenty effect.He just had his twentieth anniversary and he's
on the spectrum. He's got afour year degree. He got married a
number of years ago, met heronline and uh, they both work for
(30:15):
us. He's he's really, Imean just just amazing and you know he's
they live in an apartment. They'veyou know, he'll probably be there forever.
One of the things that he doesfor me that we do together and
he's done, is that we doa lot of training for police departments and
in the area and Garland, Garlandiast is one of them, and so
(30:38):
he and I have done a lotof training. He's done some trainings for
me. He's done trainings for otherdistricts, other not districts, but for
other police you know police. Youknow what am I trying to see?
Police departments? Thank you? It'sbeen more anyway, Yes, a bunch
of different ones. And so weusually because we have a program in Garland
or less some houses in Garland andwe don't have all the answers. We
(31:02):
do not We are not perfect.We make mistakes. I think we try
to learn from our mistakes. Butwe really just try to have the individuals
that we deal with, and thatother people, you know, families have
the best quality of life because theydeserve to have a really good quality of
life as well. So you know, we really try hard to maintain that.
I know that I do. Andlike I said, hope, you
(31:25):
got to have hope. It's tome the glass is half full and not
half empty because you never know,you never know what can happen. And
sometimes I hate to be cliche ish, but you got to think outside of
the box. You cannot just there'sthings you just have to think out of
the box, you know, andjust think about things that you probably wouldn't
normally think about. I'm going togive you one little example. So we
(31:45):
have this little kid. He cameto us when he was three or four.
He was a ward of the state, very young, very He had
failure to thrive the whole bit.Anyway. He a lot of skin,
He had a lot of skin issuesand a lot of you know whatever.
So we took him to the doctorand he got fixed up pretty well,
got him some you know, differentmedications and things, and helped his skin
(32:07):
well. One day he had anew teacher, and the teacher came to
me because this was when I wasrolling to my sensory stuff. Came to
me and said, you know,he keeps taking his shirt off and I
don't know what to do. AndI said, okay, I said,
I'll be right there. So Iwent into the room and I took a
shirt off, and I turned itinside out and put it back on him.
And I said, come back andtell me what he in about twenty
minutes, tell me what happens.So she comes back about thirty minutes later,
(32:29):
and I said what happened? Shesaid, well, he kept a
shirt on him. I said hedid. I said, why do you
think he kept a shirt on?She looked at me and she said,
I'm not really sure. So Isaid, okay, do you see this
little tag here? Now a lotof our clothing has the tags built in
pants shirts, because even myself,I mean if I if I have a
(32:50):
tag in my shirt and it's driving, you know, you can feel like
a little piece of it. Everyone'sgot him. I mean men, maybe
not as much of women. Ohmy god, I'm pulling in yank.
And I think I had this onereally really nice. I gave it to
somebody. I couldn't stand it,and I couldn't get it out. But
I can, I can deal withit. But he couldn't deal with it.
I mean, he just kept takingthe shirt off because it was he
was communicating with us. He wastelling us, this is bothering me because
(33:13):
he was nonverbal. So I andI but there was just a thing I
thought about because I was into centurystuff, and I said that the label
was bothering him, and she said, I never thought of that. So
it was like a sort of ateachable moment for her as well. But
I think again, behavior is communication. So when our individuals are behaving a
certain way, having a meltdown,having a tantrum, they are trying to
(33:35):
communicate to us something. So that'swhy I'm talking about we have to be
really aware. What are they,what's the problem? You know, what
happened before this happened. What dowe do after it happens? You know,
how can we rearrange and change theenvironment so that we can make it
better for them? So I thinkthose are some things that I've you know,
like I said, you've got tothink out of the box. And
you know, we I had ayoung lady that was there had a lot
(33:57):
of sensory issues and I used tostand in a been of beans with her.
We would stand in these beans andwe would do like you know,
imitations and things because she had allowedhis foot issues. I mean, she
didn't you know, her feet.She didn't want to wear shoes or anything.
So we stood in the beans.I stood in the beans with her.
I still hate the beans in myoffice. And it's just, you
know, just trying to you know, do something to make her more comfortable
(34:21):
and to get her to be ableto you know, communicate better and feel
better. Just you just have tothink of things like I had a parent
call about something that was it wasit could have could have ended up being
a criminal thing, okay with aI'm not gonna it's pretty big anyway.
And I told her, I said, well maybe you know, I had
a situation like this once before.And what I did was I had a
(34:43):
friend who was a policeman who cameand spoke to this individual and came in
uniform the whole bit, and hereally shocked him and so he kind of
stopped that behavior, you know,after a while. It was really so
She's I never thought about that,you know, I said, you know,
if you know somebody or even ifyou contact the local your local police
(35:04):
department, they may be because they'remore aware now of autism. And one
of the things that we try todo with the police departments is how do
you deal with a person when youmeet them in public? You know,
because a lot of times they getcalled because somebody's running away, or they
found someone on the side of theroad, or you know, somebody's what
we call eloped, and autism isthey didn't go to new they didn't got
to Nevada or in Las Vegas.They left the physics, they left the
(35:25):
program, and a lot of ourindividuals like water. A lot of kids
with autism like water and have drowned. So we need to really be aware.
And the police, i think aren'tmore aware of that now. You
don't just shoot and you know,you just because if they're stimming, you
know, they have a lot ofself simulatory behavior. They could be rocking
or flapping and it could look likethey were drunk or I mean, it's
(35:49):
same with mental illness. I think, you know, we're learning, hopefully
to understand it better and understand theperson before, you know, before we
do something drastic. And one ofthe programs that you know, some of
the police departments in this area arehaving him. One that we're trying to
I'm trying to get instituted. It'scalled take me Home, where you have
a demographic sheet on your son ordaughter that you voluntarily fill out and it
(36:12):
goes into a database at whatever policedepartment. So let's say and they have
if they have that behavior of running, they you can call and say,
you know, my son blah blahblah, you know ran away, And
all they do is they look itup online and they've got or on their
database and they've got all the information. What's his nickname? What is he
like? Does he like to betouched so that you have a better shot
(36:34):
at when you if you see him? What you do when you see that,
you get child. I have afriend that's a police that's excuse me
as a fire he's in the firedepartment and he has a son with autism.
And I've known him a while andhe every time he'd see they'd see
a kid sitting on side the roador flat, he'd call me, or
somebody ran away. Some of them, what a couple of times were my
kids, But a lot of themaren't, you know, weren't and he
(36:55):
just because he said, I youknow, they're non verbal, what do
we do? And so they wouldsee them, But it's if they have
more education than they understand. Andso you know, these people aren't going
to be violent. They just that'swhat they do. They flap in there,
and a lot of them are afraid. I mean a lot of them
are going to talk to you,you know, and they're not going to
(37:15):
make small talk. I mean,I have a young man comes in on
the weekend after the weekend, andwe don't say, hey, how were
you, how was your weekend?He starts telling me about some treasure map
he made or some stone that hefound. You know, it's in those
are the kind of conversations that wehave. I have, like very interesting
conversations with people with the individuals thatI work with, so well, awareness
(37:36):
and hope, I think are somethings I'd like people to take away,
and that there are a lot ofthings that we can do. You just
like I said, you've got toreally just kind of be creative about it
and do no harm. I dono harm. Well, going back to
your website, there's a very goodpage on there that I read for people
like myself. If you do meetsomeone with autism. It's a guideline of
(38:00):
more understanding right about how to approachthat how to talk. And I thought,
that's wonderful. The people don't doanything else, so they go to
your website and read that page becauseit's very enlightening. And I appreciate that,
and I appreciate that information being thingbecause there is a way to speak
to a person without you don't yellat them, try to be low key,
you know, calm. I getreally excited about things, but when
(38:23):
I when I'm in an emergency,I'm pretty calm, actually, because I've
learned that I have to be calm, you know, and I don't badger
somebody. You don't keep you know, if they did something, we talked
about it, and that's it.You keep on and on and on and
it just doesn't do any good.You got to get through that, and
God, and they're not going toremember it half the time anyway. I
mean, you know a lot oftimes it kind of you know, goes
(38:43):
in and out. And the otherthing about autism is that our we okay,
oh we're fine, Okay, ourindividuals don't a lot of people with
autism. One of the characteristics isthey don't generalize like us. Okay,
for instance, you and I wouldlearn something here today and we could take
it everywhere we go to the grocerystore, to where we worship, you
know, to the mall, whereverit is to. You know, our
(39:05):
individuals have to learn. That's whyeverything we do is practice. We have
to pre daily. You know,how to how to respond, how to
do this, how to you know, how to have a conversation, whatever
it is. You know, wehave to practice it because they don't necessarily
automatically generalize it. When that's whythere's a lot of repetition in learning with
them. You know, repeat it, repeat it because it just doesn't necessarily
(39:28):
compute automatically. And finally when theydo get it, they do learn to
generalize. It's a huge epiphany.I mean, it's like so exciting because
they're learning and then they can takethose things and use them in the community.
So um, it's that's one ofthe reasons why we take our individuals
out in the community a lot.And I think I was mentioning earlier.
We do a lot of volunteer work. We do meals on wheels, We
(39:50):
also have um we go to BachmanRecreation Center, which is a recreational center
for people with disabilities, all disabilities, and they have a lot of classes
and groups out there, and wetake our individuals there. We also do
some we do some work with Wedid a lot more before COVID. Unfortunately,
we worked with Jewish Family Services wehaven't done. And then we were
(40:12):
working with a couple of programs inRichardson that are like close closets and those
kinds of things. We also,I don't want to fail to mention we're
talking about staff is or individuals.She's a staff, but she comes.
She's a therapist. She's a music, dance and yoga therapist. Been coming
for years and she's wonderful and shedoes she works with the adults and she
works with the kids, you know, every like she does the adults one
(40:35):
day and the kids another day.And she does you know, and with
yoga, you've got to follow instructions, you've got to listen to directions,
you've got to be able to participate. It's really it's really neat. She
comes and does a lot of ourparties and she's been coming for a long
time. That's been really good.And we also have a wonderful art therapist.
You should see our halls and ourbuildings are just murals and all of
(40:55):
the individuals that are capable work withher on them. We have this one
main hall and it looks like you'rewalking kind of through a forest and there's
trees and leaves and a lot ofthe individuals did them, did you know,
painted them? She did the templatesand there's silhouettes of them in the
trees and they're the ones that didthe work, the ones that are It's
(41:15):
really nice and it's very calming.I had a somebody come on Friday,
did a tour and he was takingpictures. He said, can I take
pictures? I said yeah, andhe said, well, this is wonderful
because it's just you know, it'sjust nice and welcoming. You know,
it's very welcoming. So we doa lot of artwork and she makes a
lot, does a lot of ceramics, and she has parties for the kids
once a month. It's you know, we have people that get involved with
(41:37):
us kind of like to stay involvedwith us because we try to be very
welcoming and you know, embrace thecommunity very good. You know, our
mission here is to give a visionand voice to individuals making an impact on
difference in the community. You,your staff, and everyone working with autistic
(41:59):
people fit that bill perfectly. We'reso glad to have you here today to
hear what we can do learn more. I've learned so much myself, and
again we'll put your information up onthe screen. People on getting touched,
thinking, looking for a job thatdonate by tickets to the gala, helping
(42:20):
any way they can, and justplease, if you have any needing information
about autism or whatever, contact doctorand see they can help. So thank
you so much for being here,and thank you to our sponsors for making
it possible. Niagara and Bruna Haven, Thank you, Thank you,
Welcome to Advocacy in Motion. Weare here every week to give a vision
and a voice to nonprofit organizations andindividuals making an impact in our community.
And before I introduced our guest today, I want to thank our presenting sponsor,
Niagara. Niagara, you may know, is a leading manufacturer and distributor
of water saving plumbing products. Theirnew Stealth designed toilets save up to sixty
(00:33):
percent of water, which means upto sixty of cost savings, and that's
important for every household, but it'sespecially important to the nonprofit affordable housing projects
that they support. Saving money fora nonprofit organization is vitally important, and
Niagara is doing their part in theaffordable housing units, especially in the New
(00:56):
Volunteers of America Oaks project in theOak Cliff District of Dallas. So thank
you to Niagara for joining us andfor continuing to support our program. My
guest today is doctor Carol and Garver. She is a program director for the
Autism Treatment Center. Welcome, I'mglad you can join us. Well,
thank you very much for having me. Let's start with the basics. For
(01:19):
people like me and many out therethat think we know something about autism,
but we really have no clue.What is autism? Please tell us,
well, Autism is a complex developmentaldisorder. It is not a mental illness.
And I like to say that becausea lot of people kind of get
it confused. I'm not going toget technical, but it's because it's in
the DSM, which is the DiagnosticStatistical Manual, which is the bible of
(01:44):
all disorders. It is. Itis included in there, but so is
intellectual disability and ADHD, and alot of people do not have. It
is not a mental illness. Youcan have a mental illness with it.
You can have what they call coexistingconditions of ADHD or obsessive compulsive, just
a lot of different things. Butautism in and of itself is not It
(02:05):
is not a mental illness. Autismhas um. The issues with autism is
that individuals have a problem with communicationand not About fifty percent of individuals with
autism are nonverbal. So one ofthe things that we work really hard on
is communicating. Either would it bethrough language verbal language is better because most
people understand that, or through signlanguage or using now we use a lot
(02:28):
of you know, devices, augmentativedevices. Autism also involves social issues.
Individuals with autism have a hard timein social situations. They have a hard
time sustaining conversation, starting conversations,they have a hard time making friends,
they have they have a hard timebeing around a lot of people. You
(02:50):
know there, And I'm going touse the word neurotypical, which we used
to call normal neurotypical. These individualsare what we call neurodiverse. Another issue
is behavioral issues, and so theydo manifest certain issues. And what they
did when they changed the DSM diagnosisa couple you know, the category a
couple of years ago, they alsoadded sensory issues, which I was really
(03:12):
glad because sensory is a huge issuewith people with autism, and I've done
a lot of work on sensory issueswith people with autism. If individuals,
if children get to have a lotof you know, support when they're younger,
because early intervention is the key.I mean, I'm talking now we
can diagnose children at the age ofone's It's called the aid ASS, which
(03:35):
is the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule ARE. It's a gold standard for autism and
they can now do autism diagnosis andtoddlers, and I think one of the
things that I was we were talkingabout earlier was that it's so important to
get them involved early on in somekind of an intervention because it really can
mitigate the symptoms. The thing aboutthe sensory is if they get the support
(03:57):
like occupational therapy and speech therapy,they and mitigate those symptoms of sensory issues
as they get older, so they'renot as they're not as they don't determine
as much that they're not as strongwhen they're older. So because we've done
a lot of studies, but soautism has basically social communication and behavior and
sensory issues. It is a lifelongdisability and it is not something that you
(04:19):
acquire four or five years later.A lot of times kids have been diagnosed
or misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. And of course when I started in
this business, it was the statisticswere one in ten thousand, one to
two and ten thousand, okay,fifty something years ago, and it went
(04:42):
from there and it went down.It went to like, you know,
one in five hundred, one intwo fifty one in you know, one
fifty one in sixty eight, onein forty six, and now it's then
it was one excuse me, onein forty two, and the CDC just
gave us one in thirty six asa statistics. So there are one out
of every thirty six individuals diagnosed withautism in the United States. Now it's
(05:03):
a I hate to use the wordpandemic. I don't want to scare anybody,
but basically, a pandemic is thatsomething that's widespread and it's worldwide.
Autism is everywhere, It's in everystate. Korea, they did a big
study and they have they found onein thirty South Korea excuse me, let
me be specific in South Korea,and they found one in thirty six individuals.
(05:24):
We're on the spectrum. So we'relooking at that, you know,
pretty seriously, and because that's prettyhigh. I mean, that's a pretty
high. What we call prevalence andthe prevalence of That's what CDC looks at
is the prevalence, which means thenumber of cases already existing. I happen
to do some work in epidemiology,and so the incidence, which means the
(05:45):
number of new cases is also rising. About there are children in the United
States about about every twenty minutes arediagnosed with autism, and that's that's a
pretty high that's a pretty high diagnosis. The numbers have come down, dude,
to just better research, more research, and more involvement and that.
(06:05):
Yeah, I'm not it's a simplequestion. Is there a cause for it?
It's not a simple question. That'sa sam But let me segue back
a little bit. I think,you know some of the things. Definitely
looking at research, Definitely looking atthe fact that people are more aware.
Awareness is really huge, being awarebecause it's so much, it's so out
there now. I mean, we'relooking at you know, sports figures,
(06:27):
high high end sports figures to haveindividuals with autism. You've got you've got
musicians, you've got people you knowthere, you've got celebs, and you've
got actors, and you've also gota lot of politicians that have people in
their families with autism. So theawareness has been just has arisen, basically,
which is a good thing because wewant to know, you know,
(06:47):
it does affect so many people andbecause it's such a complex disorder. There's
not one cause for autism, okay, and we really we don't know,
but we're looking at pretty much geneticsnow, we're looking at about sixty percent
is a genetic based predisistion predisposition forautism. And we're also looking at the
environment um and we're looking at aninteraction between the environment and between the genetics.
(07:12):
And if you think about it,think about ADHD, and think about
diabetes, and think about asthma,it's it's it's increased everywhere in everything.
So what's affecting that? How iseverybody getting so affected by all that?
Look at our environment and you know, it's it's changing, and it's it's
affecting everybody. You know, we'vegot things that we never had before.
And we were growing up. Myparents chrise, they're gone now, but
(07:34):
they grew up on meat and potatoes, but there were there were no steroids
in them, there was no youknow, preservatives in them. So they
lived a lot longer. And soI think that, you know, we
really need to look at what weyou know, jest, what we put
in our body, what we breathe, and look what we're up facing today.
It's so hard. So I really, you know, we're really looking
at the effect of the interaction betweenenvironment and between the genetics. Now you're
(08:01):
autism treatment center, Where are youlocated? Were they We are the Autism
Treatment Center of Dallas. We havewe're located over off of Forest Lane between
Skillman and Plano Road, so we'rekind of in East Dallas, or not
East Dallas, but northeast Dallas.We also have a San Antonio program,
and we also have what we callan outpatient ABA clinic, a PLOD Behavior
(08:24):
Analysis clinic in the Fort Worth area. Now's the treatment center was established in
nineteen seventy six, right, AndI think you I saw on your website
just a few few people there,whatever, And you've grown so much over
the years. What's the most significantthing you have seen to develop over those
years? Where you are from whereyou started to where you are now?
(08:46):
Oh, a lot of things.Well, basically I got it started in
seventy six, and I started inseventy nine. So last Friday was my
forty fourth anniversary at the Autism TreatmentCenter. So that's kind of scary to
me in a way. You know, when I talk to people on the
phone and they're asking me advice orthey're asking me about whatever or referral or
(09:07):
this or what do I do?And I tell them how long I've been
there, I get this pause,But It's also sort of a makes them
feel better because they feel like somebody'sFirst of all, a lot of them
don't ever get called back. Imean I get calls daily, literally,
you know, because they feel likeI and I always speak to people.
If somebody calls me, I callthem back and I give them as much
(09:28):
information as I possibly can. Youknow, we can't take everybody and autism.
You know, individuals that weren't diagnosedearly on are starting to develop a
lot more complex symptoms. Then youknow, there's a lot of aggression.
Unfortunately, there's there's a lot ofoppositional defiant behavior. I don't you know,
(09:48):
things are changing. I think youknow, being that we are learning
about ABA, which is applied behavioranalysis. Now that's a big change.
We've expanded our program. I meanwe have We started out with one or
two group homes. We have eighteengroup homes in the community. We also
have an outpatient Applied Behavior Analysis ABAprogram. We have a TEA Texas Education
(10:09):
Agency approved school and I'll tell youwhat that is in a minute. We
have an adult services program. Wealso have an outpatient what they call an
ATCIRA, which is an autism treatmentcenter rehabilitation agency where we do speech and
OT for individuals on the spectrum.We also see other kids, We see
kids with intellectual disabilities too. Butas I was saying earlier, you have
(10:31):
to have a diagnosis of autism forthe insurance to pay for those services.
Not speech and OT, but forthe ABA. I know you have a
wonderful website and know their list sevenprogram services. You mentioned a couple of
them. Then what are some ofthe services that you provide? Those are
pretty much the services we provide.We used to do diagnosis diagnostics. We
(10:56):
don't do them right now because it'sjust we just don't have the capability to
do it because we're really so busy. So basically it's pretty much just residential
the ABA, the school, thetherapies, the adult services. That's right
now pretty much what we're doing.Okay, I know your mission a statement
is changing lives and building futures forall, and you put the emphasis on
(11:20):
for all. Tell us a littlebit about that about how well you know,
Like I said, I we can'thelp everybody, you know, and
unfortunately, there are very there's nota lot of services in the Texas basically,
I mean there are services, buta lot of them are just completely
full, I mean just overflowing becauseof the amount of individuals on the spectrum.
(11:43):
And I used to get some statisticsfrom Texas, but they don't show
they don't do them anymore. Unfortunately. You know, last I looked,
or the last I got anything fromHealth and Human Services was something like three
hundred thousand individuals on the spectrum inTexas. And you know, there are
law waiting list for services through thestate. You know, Unfortunately, it's
(12:03):
very costly to you know, educatean individual or to serve an individual with
autism because of all the different servicesand supports that they need. Um.
So I think that, you know, that's a that's an issue that we
need to deal with. So it'slike I said, I try really hard
to give people a lot of resourcesas many as I can, or give
(12:26):
them some ideas, and a lotof people don't know. You know,
I'll get a call from a parentand there and I'm like, well,
did you do this with the district, did you do that with the school?
Did you have you done? Andthey don't really know about it,
and so, um, I thinkmaybe we need to do a better job.
Maybe not ATC because I do thebest that I can to talk to
people and try to help them.And I talk to people all over the
state, all over the country,all over sometimes I've gotten lots of referrals
(12:48):
from all over the world. Youknow, It's just it's like I said,
it's it's a it's all over theworld. It's a difficult situation because
it's complex. Tell me a littlebit about the Tree and Centered itself,
your staff and how you are andwho works there and how it works with
the kids. Well, we,of course we have certified teachers because we
(13:09):
have a te Texas Education Agency approvedschool, and then we have teacher assistance
that work with us. We alsofor our for our school districts. We
also have a lot of behavioral individuals, a lot of behavior staff because our
kids do engage in a lot ofsometimes what we call challenging behaviors. So,
like we said, we have ourABA staff, and so we have
board certified behavior analysts. We havewhat we call ourbts, which are registered
(13:33):
behavior technicians, and then they alsohave BTS. You get a lot of
acronyms in this world behavior technicians.And then I also have a behavior manager
who helps me with my residential andthe school and works with the ABA program,
and she's actually working on her CID, which is she wants to be
able to start evaluating and assessing kidswith autism, so she's trying to get
(13:56):
that certification and she's getting a degreein that, which would be great because
then hopefully we can start doing morediagnostics because we right now we're referring our
diagnostics out the other. So thenwe also have what we call in our
residential programs. We call them DSPs, which are direct support professionals, and
there's always there's two people in ahome. There's usually an awake staff because
(14:18):
we have to man those homes twentyfour seven. They cannot in These individuals
are needing all the support and thestructure. They cannot be left alone.
They have to have staff in thehomes, and it's been a challenge lately
because of the economy I don't knowwhy, and because people aren't working as
much, so we've had a realproblem trying to find staff. Then we
also have direct support professionals in ouradult program and they work with the individuals
(14:43):
during the day because we have anadult day program that many of the individuals
that live in our homes go tothat program, are in that program,
and then we try to get themout in the community as much as possible.
We're really trying to do a lotof community based events. They do
a lot of volunteering. Kind ofexcited because actually two of my individuals who
(15:03):
are in one of our programs excuseme, he's in our one of our
residential programs. Because we have theeighteen group homes, we also have a
program we have the maybe this ispart of the seventh we have a residential
treatment center through the Texas Department ofFamily and Protective Services. So we will
we take and service work with kidswho have been either abused or neglected or
(15:26):
have been removed for their from theirhomes for whatever reason, and we do
we take care of them. Theylive with us, We put them in
school wherever they need to be.They go to our school, they can
go to public school. I thinkright now we have seven or eight or
maybe nine individual maybe even more kidsthat are going that live with us to
go to public school. Then wehave a lot of individuals that live with
(15:48):
us to go to our school.So I guess it's it's kind of a
you know, whatever we need todo. It's we work on that.
And then of course at our therapy, at our therapy clinic, we have
speech and so of course we havecertified you know, speech therapists and occupational
therapists, and we do do alot of sensory occupational therapy because it's really
important because these kids do have sensoryissues. But I have two young well
(16:11):
one of them just finished. Hegoes to school. They're both in public
school, but they're off for thesummer. And so though one of them,
the younger one, he actually didan internship at a local pharmacy this
summer. Not at the pharmacy,but in the drugs strike. Drugs call
him drug stories and taxes. I'mfrom New York, I don't know.
And so he did. He workedlike five weeks and hit a job coach
(16:33):
somebody that was with him every dayto help him, and he did really
well and he got to make alittle bit of money. Now, this
other individual that I have, heactually is in public school. He's in
different there because some of our programsare in Garland, some are in Dallas,
they go to different school districts.This one, this young man lives
in Dallas, so he goes toa different school district and he's in a
kind of a transition program. Solast semester he went to Richland College.
(16:57):
I guess they call him Dallas Collegesnow, but there needs to be Richland
because that's where we're over close by, and he worked. He went over
there two days a week for youknow, learning like activities of daily living,
you know, functional skills such ashow to maintain a checkbook, you
know how to do how to simplecooking, just different things that he did.
(17:18):
And he wasn't actually enrolled in Richland, but it was at the college
that he had these classes. Andthen he works at Water Burger three days
a week, and the water Burgersright over by our office, so he
walks over there. Now he's hada few little issues, you know,
that we've had to work with.Now he doesn't even have a job coach.
He had a job coach during thesemester, but the summer he hasn't
had one. So it's been prettyexciting. I get a lot of great
(17:41):
information from him because I'm pretty muchsee him every day. When I see
him all every day, my thingis is that I am there because of
these individuals, and if I can'tbe around them or get to do things
with them. Then then I'm notworth anything because I have to know,
you know, what it is thatI'm working with in order to be able
to help other people and some ofthe adults that are in our profect.
(18:03):
I talked to a mom this morning. Her son was eight when I met
him. He's now fifty's going tobe fifty seven. She's going to be
ninety. She's been my friend allthese years, and she remembered that I
was doing this. I thought,I can't believe you remember. I'm so
proud of you anyway, And soI've known her, you know, forty
something years. And one of thethings I think that's interesting when people ask
(18:27):
me, you know, when theyhave a young child, what's the future
look like? Well, I can'tpredict the future, obviously, but from
my experience being you know, andlong you know, being able to see
longitudinally what these individuals can accomplish,I can give him some good advice and
I can give him hope. Ithink it's so important to not lose hope
(18:48):
because there are new things coming,you know, coming down the pike.
Every day, there's you know,new research. We can't lose hope.
I know it gets frustrating. It'sa labor of love and it's like you
were saying about your friends, it'svery intense. You have to be really
dedicated and you know it can bevery frustrating sometimes when you don't get what
you need or you know you can'tfind the services. Please, it's very
(19:10):
important to have hope. That's oneof my big things to send home.
Well, the story about the youngpeople you were talking about is right along
your mission statement of changing lives andbuilding futures. So let me take a
break here talk about one of ourother sponsors and know and come back.
How about how people can help you, how you can get involved in some
of the events and things that you'redoing. But I want to thank prun
(19:32):
Haven Energy, Wellness and Gifts forthe Soul. This is a wonderful spiritual
gift shop in downtown Richardson, andif you go in you will see free
trade merchandise from all over the countryfrom the villages. You'll see artwork from
local artists, you'll see incense,candles, all the good stuff there.
(19:55):
And on the fourth Saturday of everymonth they have a psychic fair, so
you can go to Paranahn dot com. Check them out. See all that
they do there. The energy isthere, the wellness you'll see a lot
of ways that they can help there, and gifts for the soul. So
it's just a wonderful place. Andif you go in you see Alex,
(20:15):
tell her dad said hello. Thisis a family business. And if you
see her the baby that sky she'llbe running the show in a few years.
So check them out Pranahn dot comor stop in downtown Richardson and say
hello to everyone. So I wantto thank them. They've been a great
(20:36):
sponsored bars and really help a lotof nonprofits, so we're glad to have
them and Niagara as well. Tellme how people can help you get in
touch and what you need. Isee also that you are hiring staff and
people. Tell us about that first. Well that's what I was saying early.
Can I segway back a little bitfor a minute, Okay, I
just one of the things that I'vediscovered that I think it's very interesting to
(20:59):
me with autism is that individuals withautism are very literal. Okay, I
mean very literal, and sometimes itgets it gets hard because if you explain
something and they don't understand it,the way that they think they should understand
it. It can get kind ofconfusing. So M, I try really
hard not to, you know,complicate things. I speak kind of you
(21:22):
know, I try to, youknow, simplify things a lot. M.
One of my I have to tellthis, one one of my favorite
stories is one of my young menwho used to he's now aged out of
the program, but he was inour CPS custody and he was talking to
his mother one day and he said, you know, he was very verbal.
And the kids, a lot ofthe kids call me doctor Garber.
They do not have to call medoctor Garber, but you know, they
just it's a habit and they getthey're very habitual because they have a lot
(21:45):
of what we call restricted interests,and so they really focus on certain things.
If they like dinosaurs, if theylike you know, if they like
moons or you know, whatever itis, they like geography, trains,
they get very fixated and they reallyknow everything and talk a lot about him.
I have a young man that thathas he's into trailers like and everything
that he builds, and he buildssome really they're really creative. I mean
(22:07):
I have some individuals who are verycreative he builds these trucks out of legos,
and he always has a trailer thathe maybe he made out of a
piece of cardboard, and he alwayshas a trailer hitch. I was showing
somebody the other day. Every oneof the things that he's built me have
little trailer. They're great. Butanyway, so one day, this young
man was talking to his mom onthe phone and he said, my toe
witches and she said, your toewitches and he said, yeah, my
toe witches. And she said,well, maybe you know you've got athletes'
(22:30):
foot, and you said, heshould. You know, I always wanted
to be an athlete, and Ijust, you know, I hear these
stories all the time. I toldthis. I was in the I was
talking to one of my adults oneday and I said, she talks a
lot, okay, And I askedher a question and she said nothing.
She just kind of possed him andI said, what's the matter, can't
(22:51):
got your tongue? I spoke ina metaphor. She said, you know,
I don't have a cat. Sothose are kinds of things that I
don't I never thought about before,but I think about a lot now because
I don't always understand it. Thisone other young man who I he's very
special and he's the one that worksat what a Burger. When he was
in college, he decided he wantedto be a policeman. So I said
to him he came back. WhenDay says, well, I think I'm
(23:14):
going to apply to the police academy. I never say no because maybe they
if they can't make it, maybethey could work in the police to whatever
it is. I never say no. Well, it depends on what it
is that I don't say no.And he said, well, I'm going
to be a police department, apolice a policeman. And I looked at
him and I said, you know, if you're a policeman, you're going
to have to make judgment calls.And he goes, what's a judgment call?
And I said, well, ifyou don't know what a judgment call
(23:36):
is, that's something you're gonna haveto work on. So it's you know,
they have these ideas, but thenit's they truly don't understand, so
you kind of got to work throughit a lot. But I think it's
really important because you know, it'speople are not you know, we're literally
understand a lot of those things,but a lot of our people with autism
don't understand them. So okay,so I'm sorry you we're asking me about
(23:57):
hiring on this. Yeah, Ican go back to what I did.
See, I'm pretty good now.Hiring has been. Like I said earlier,
it's been very difficult. Um,first of all, I don't know
that we can compete financially with alot of these places, you know that
other that are not with you know, working with people with on the with
disabilities, it's it's hard. Imean, it's a very high risk population.
(24:18):
I mean it's there's a lot,you have to pay a lot of
attention, and it's it's a lot, and it's you have to have a
lot of patients. Um. Youknow, we've had a couple of staff
that have more than a couple thathave worked there for a really long time,
which is pretty amazing. Actually,myself and my boss, who's the
executive director, Anna Hunley, she'sbeen there forty years. I've been there
forty four years. And um uhyou la aka Tuffy Williams, who is
(24:42):
my residential one of our residential coordinators, she's been there with me. The
three of us have been together forover like a hundred years. If you
add it all up, she's beenthere over forty two years. So that's
pretty amazing for a nonprofit organization.And so I think that there's been a
lot of stability. Again though alot of people come in, they try
(25:03):
it out a little bit and thenthey feel like they just can't do it
because it is pretty stressful. Andand then there's people to come in and
are just grade it, you know, just love it and have never done
it, and are you really likeit? So we are looking, you
know for yes, we're hiring,we're hiring. We'll come back to the
several more times. But tell ushow people can get in touch with you
through the website or well, theycan get through the website or they can
(25:26):
call the main number. Do youwant me to give them main number?
People won't remember that, No,that's right. Well, they can go
through the webbs it's UM atc Apple, Tom Charlie of o f as in
Frank t e x as dot organd basically it's UM. There's a there's
(25:47):
a way that you could if youhave need information, you can send your
question through the email and then Iusually get them. We usually get them
to you know, San Antonio orDallas usually gets them. If it we're
depending on what it relates to.UM. So we can you can yes
through the website pretty and I thinkthere maybe there is an employment piece on
the website where you can look andsee what jobs are available. Okay,
(26:08):
and we'll put all this up onyour website. Stuff information up on the
screen. Okay. You have severalevents. I know you have a gala
coming up. Since how can peoplehelp you tell us about some of the
EVENTE day. Well, one ofthe events that we well, this big
one that was coming up in September. It's been like thirty seven years.
(26:32):
Maybe it's been a long We've doneit for many years. There was a
wonderful man, many many he's stilla wonderful man, Bobby Norris, who
came to us and he had adaughter with autism and said I want to
do something. So anyway, he'sthe one that's been the mover and shaker
of this for all these different years. And we've had different galas through all
these years. It's been pretty amazing. So it's in September. It's the
sixteenth of September. Now. Itstarted out in Fort Worth because he's kind
(26:56):
of a cowboy in a rancher startedout in Fort Worth and we were there
for a number of years. Icouldn't tell you exactly, but then I
think we lost our contractor we couldn'tnegotiate a contract. So we ended up
moving it to Dallas, and sowe were we had the gala in Dallas
for many many years at a downtownhotel, and the COVID, COVID hit,
(27:19):
COVID just did a number on everybody. I can't blame it on everything,
but and so we ended up goingto people decided that they wanted to
the committee decided they wanted to goback to Fort Worth so to have the
gala. So last year we hadthe gala in the stockyards, and I
think we're having it again, notthink, I know we're having it again
this year in the stockyards. Excuseme, at the Drover Hotel. Oh
(27:41):
that's a fun place. Yeah it'swild down there. Yeah it's a beautiful,
beautiful hotel. Anything else going onthroughout the year that we need to
help, well, we you know, we do a lot of We've been
doing some small things. You know, it's been so hot. We haven't
done a whole lot this summer.Um, you know, we do some
golf tournaments and we do some artthings. I think this is really our
(28:02):
biggest, you know, our biggestthing, and we do of course,
we do a campaign every you know, we send out a campaign every Christmas
and of course Giving Day in Northexa'sGiving Day. We always try to you
know, focus on you know,doing as well as we can. You
know, we've had some wonderful donorsthrough the years. We still do and
actually I don't mention. Yapp andAlchavon z Vaden, who he used to
(28:23):
be the you know, the conductorfor the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, have become
friends of ours and actually, um, they're going to be helping us with
the gala this year. Um he'sactually of course they live. He's in
New York now he's at the NewYork Metropolitan and um, not the opera.
(28:44):
He's at the New York Symphony.Sorry, he's not at the opera.
He doesn't sing, but he playsthe violin. And so they're going
to help us with the roundup thisyear. And they've helped us before in
the past, so that'll be exciting. We've talked about a lot of things
what do we mess Is there somethingdo you want as to know that we
haven't talked about and just tell uswhat we've missed. I've sort of abbreviated
(29:07):
everything. I just like I said, I think that I think autism is
so it's been incredible for me.I mean, I've learned a lot through
autism. It's been very good tome. I think I've learned a lot
of patients. Probably not as patientwith my family members as I am with
my kids, or I call themkids, because I've been there so long.
You know, we have individuals youknow you talked about for all.
(29:29):
We have individuals that we've had literallythrough the lifespan. One of our oldest
individuals, he is seventy five yearsold. He's maybe seventy six now,
and he came well probably about thesame time I did, you know,
forty something years ago. He's beenthere a really long time. And one
of the things I think that we'retrying to do is because autism doesn't go
(29:52):
away, and you know you don'tonce you know, once you have autism,
you have autism. You can absolutelydo millions of things. I have
an assistant, well he sort ofis an assistant to everybody. Now,
he's been there over twenty effect.He just had his twentieth anniversary and he's
on the spectrum. He's got afour year degree. He got married a
number of years ago, met heronline and uh, they both work for
(30:15):
us. He's he's really, Imean just just amazing and you know he's
they live in an apartment. They'veyou know, he'll probably be there forever.
One of the things that he doesfor me that we do together and
he's done, is that we doa lot of training for police departments and
in the area and Garland, Garlandiast is one of them, and so
(30:38):
he and I have done a lotof training. He's done some trainings for
me. He's done trainings for otherdistricts, other not districts, but for
other police you know police. Youknow what am I trying to see?
Police departments? Thank you? It'sbeen more anyway, Yes, a bunch
of different ones. And so weusually because we have a program in Garland
or less some houses in Garland andwe don't have all the answers. We
(31:02):
do not We are not perfect.We make mistakes. I think we try
to learn from our mistakes. Butwe really just try to have the individuals
that we deal with, and thatother people, you know, families have
the best quality of life because theydeserve to have a really good quality of
life as well. So you know, we really try hard to maintain that.
I know that I do. Andlike I said, hope, you
(31:25):
got to have hope. It's tome the glass is half full and not
half empty because you never know,you never know what can happen. And
sometimes I hate to be cliche ish, but you got to think outside of
the box. You cannot just there'sthings you just have to think out of
the box, you know, andjust think about things that you probably wouldn't
normally think about. I'm going togive you one little example. So we
(31:45):
have this little kid. He cameto us when he was three or four.
He was a ward of the state, very young, very He had
failure to thrive the whole bit.Anyway. He a lot of skin,
He had a lot of skin issuesand a lot of you know whatever.
So we took him to the doctorand he got fixed up pretty well,
got him some you know, differentmedications and things, and helped his skin
(32:07):
well. One day he had anew teacher, and the teacher came to
me because this was when I wasrolling to my sensory stuff. Came to
me and said, you know,he keeps taking his shirt off and I
don't know what to do. AndI said, okay, I said,
I'll be right there. So Iwent into the room and I took a
shirt off, and I turned itinside out and put it back on him.
And I said, come back andtell me what he in about twenty
minutes, tell me what happens.So she comes back about thirty minutes later,
(32:29):
and I said what happened? Shesaid, well, he kept a
shirt on him. I said hedid. I said, why do you
think he kept a shirt on?She looked at me and she said,
I'm not really sure. So Isaid, okay, do you see this
little tag here? Now a lotof our clothing has the tags built in
pants shirts, because even myself,I mean if I if I have a
(32:50):
tag in my shirt and it's driving, you know, you can feel like
a little piece of it. Everyone'sgot him. I mean men, maybe
not as much of women. Ohmy god, I'm pulling in yank.
And I think I had this onereally really nice. I gave it to
somebody. I couldn't stand it,and I couldn't get it out. But
I can, I can deal withit. But he couldn't deal with it.
I mean, he just kept takingthe shirt off because it was he
was communicating with us. He wastelling us, this is bothering me because
(33:13):
he was nonverbal. So I andI but there was just a thing I
thought about because I was into centurystuff, and I said that the label
was bothering him, and she said, I never thought of that. So
it was like a sort of ateachable moment for her as well. But
I think again, behavior is communication. So when our individuals are behaving a
certain way, having a meltdown,having a tantrum, they are trying to
(33:35):
communicate to us something. So that'swhy I'm talking about we have to be
really aware. What are they,what's the problem? You know, what
happened before this happened. What dowe do after it happens? You know,
how can we rearrange and change theenvironment so that we can make it
better for them? So I thinkthose are some things that I've you know,
like I said, you've got tothink out of the box. And
you know, we I had ayoung lady that was there had a lot
(33:57):
of sensory issues and I used tostand in a been of beans with her.
We would stand in these beans andwe would do like you know,
imitations and things because she had allowedhis foot issues. I mean, she
didn't you know, her feet.She didn't want to wear shoes or anything.
So we stood in the beans.I stood in the beans with her.
I still hate the beans in myoffice. And it's just, you
know, just trying to you know, do something to make her more comfortable
(34:21):
and to get her to be ableto you know, communicate better and feel
better. Just you just have tothink of things like I had a parent
call about something that was it wasit could have could have ended up being
a criminal thing, okay with aI'm not gonna it's pretty big anyway.
And I told her, I said, well maybe you know, I had
a situation like this once before.And what I did was I had a
(34:43):
friend who was a policeman who cameand spoke to this individual and came in
uniform the whole bit, and hereally shocked him and so he kind of
stopped that behavior, you know,after a while. It was really so
She's I never thought about that,you know, I said, you know,
if you know somebody or even ifyou contact the local your local police
(35:04):
department, they may be because they'remore aware now of autism. And one
of the things that we try todo with the police departments is how do
you deal with a person when youmeet them in public? You know,
because a lot of times they getcalled because somebody's running away, or they
found someone on the side of theroad, or you know, somebody's what
we call eloped, and autism isthey didn't go to new they didn't got
to Nevada or in Las Vegas.They left the physics, they left the
(35:25):
program, and a lot of ourindividuals like water. A lot of kids
with autism like water and have drowned. So we need to really be aware.
And the police, i think aren'tmore aware of that now. You
don't just shoot and you know,you just because if they're stimming, you
know, they have a lot ofself simulatory behavior. They could be rocking
or flapping and it could look likethey were drunk or I mean, it's
(35:49):
same with mental illness. I think, you know, we're learning, hopefully
to understand it better and understand theperson before, you know, before we
do something drastic. And one ofthe programs that you know, some of
the police departments in this area arehaving him. One that we're trying to
I'm trying to get instituted. It'scalled take me Home, where you have
a demographic sheet on your son ordaughter that you voluntarily fill out and it
(36:12):
goes into a database at whatever policedepartment. So let's say and they have
if they have that behavior of running, they you can call and say,
you know, my son blah blahblah, you know ran away, And
all they do is they look itup online and they've got or on their
database and they've got all the information. What's his nickname? What is he
like? Does he like to betouched so that you have a better shot
(36:34):
at when you if you see him? What you do when you see that,
you get child. I have afriend that's a police that's excuse me
as a fire he's in the firedepartment and he has a son with autism.
And I've known him a while andhe every time he'd see they'd see
a kid sitting on side the roador flat, he'd call me, or
somebody ran away. Some of them, what a couple of times were my
kids, But a lot of themaren't, you know, weren't and he
(36:55):
just because he said, I youknow, they're non verbal, what do
we do? And so they wouldsee them, But it's if they have
more education than they understand. Andso you know, these people aren't going
to be violent. They just that'swhat they do. They flap in there,
and a lot of them are afraid. I mean a lot of them
are going to talk to you,you know, and they're not going to
(37:15):
make small talk. I mean,I have a young man comes in on
the weekend after the weekend, andwe don't say, hey, how were
you, how was your weekend?He starts telling me about some treasure map
he made or some stone that hefound. You know, it's in those
are the kind of conversations that wehave. I have, like very interesting
conversations with people with the individuals thatI work with, so well, awareness
(37:36):
and hope, I think are somethings I'd like people to take away,
and that there are a lot ofthings that we can do. You just
like I said, you've got toreally just kind of be creative about it
and do no harm. I dono harm. Well, going back to
your website, there's a very goodpage on there that I read for people
like myself. If you do meetsomeone with autism. It's a guideline of
(38:00):
more understanding right about how to approachthat how to talk. And I thought,
that's wonderful. The people don't doanything else, so they go to
your website and read that page becauseit's very enlightening. And I appreciate that,
and I appreciate that information being thingbecause there is a way to speak
to a person without you don't yellat them, try to be low key,
you know, calm. I getreally excited about things, but when
(38:23):
I when I'm in an emergency,I'm pretty calm, actually, because I've
learned that I have to be calm, you know, and I don't badger
somebody. You don't keep you know, if they did something, we talked
about it, and that's it.You keep on and on and on and
it just doesn't do any good.You got to get through that, and
God, and they're not going toremember it half the time anyway. I
mean, you know a lot oftimes it kind of you know, goes
(38:43):
in and out. And the otherthing about autism is that our we okay,
oh we're fine, Okay, ourindividuals don't a lot of people with
autism. One of the characteristics isthey don't generalize like us. Okay,
for instance, you and I wouldlearn something here today and we could take
it everywhere we go to the grocerystore, to where we worship, you
know, to the mall, whereverit is to. You know, our
(39:05):
individuals have to learn. That's whyeverything we do is practice. We have
to pre daily. You know,how to how to respond, how to
do this, how to you know, how to have a conversation, whatever
it is. You know, wehave to practice it because they don't necessarily
automatically generalize it. When that's whythere's a lot of repetition in learning with
them. You know, repeat it, repeat it because it just doesn't necessarily
(39:28):
compute automatically. And finally when theydo get it, they do learn to
generalize. It's a huge epiphany.I mean, it's like so exciting because
they're learning and then they can takethose things and use them in the community.
So um, it's that's one ofthe reasons why we take our individuals
out in the community a lot.And I think I was mentioning earlier.
We do a lot of volunteer work. We do meals on wheels, We
(39:50):
also have um we go to BachmanRecreation Center, which is a recreational center
for people with disabilities, all disabilities, and they have a lot of classes
and groups out there, and wetake our individuals there. We also do
some we do some work with Wedid a lot more before COVID. Unfortunately,
we worked with Jewish Family Services wehaven't done. And then we were
(40:12):
working with a couple of programs inRichardson that are like close closets and those
kinds of things. We also,I don't want to fail to mention we're
talking about staff is or individuals.She's a staff, but she comes.
She's a therapist. She's a music, dance and yoga therapist. Been coming
for years and she's wonderful and shedoes she works with the adults and she
works with the kids, you know, every like she does the adults one
(40:35):
day and the kids another day.And she does you know, and with
yoga, you've got to follow instructions, you've got to listen to directions,
you've got to be able to participate. It's really it's really neat. She
comes and does a lot of ourparties and she's been coming for a long
time. That's been really good.And we also have a wonderful art therapist.
You should see our halls and ourbuildings are just murals and all of
(40:55):
the individuals that are capable work withher on them. We have this one
main hall and it looks like you'rewalking kind of through a forest and there's
trees and leaves and a lot ofthe individuals did them, did you know,
painted them? She did the templatesand there's silhouettes of them in the
trees and they're the ones that didthe work, the ones that are It's
(41:15):
really nice and it's very calming.I had a somebody come on Friday,
did a tour and he was takingpictures. He said, can I take
pictures? I said yeah, andhe said, well, this is wonderful
because it's just you know, it'sjust nice and welcoming. You know,
it's very welcoming. So we doa lot of artwork and she makes a
lot, does a lot of ceramics, and she has parties for the kids
once a month. It's you know, we have people that get involved with
(41:37):
us kind of like to stay involvedwith us because we try to be very
welcoming and you know, embrace thecommunity very good. You know, our
mission here is to give a visionand voice to individuals making an impact on
difference in the community. You,your staff, and everyone working with autistic
(41:59):
people fit that bill perfectly. We'reso glad to have you here today to
hear what we can do learn more. I've learned so much myself, and
again we'll put your information up onthe screen. People on getting touched,
thinking, looking for a job thatdonate by tickets to the gala, helping
(42:20):
any way they can, and justplease, if you have any needing information
about autism or whatever, contact doctorand see they can help. So thank
you so much for being here,and thank you to our sponsors for making
it possible. Niagara and Bruna Haven, Thank you, Thank you,
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