Folks are coming out of the woodwork?

 Folks are coming out of the woodwork!

New research is indicating that the number of adults with autism is growing by leaps and bounds.  Since 2011, the number of people over 18 diagnosed with autism has more than doubled.  Currently, there are over 403,000 adult Medicaid beneficiaries with the diagnosis.  The increase in adults between the ages of 25-34 has jumped 195%!   Curiously the incidence of people with intellectual disability has declined from 62% to 46%.

There has also been a steep increase in the diagnosis of children.  At this time, it is approaching 1 in 36.

The question then becomes, why?

There is an old saying, “seek and thy shall find”.  It may be that we are seeking.  There have been multiple theories advanced about why the increase in children diagnosed with autism.  

Various vaccines have been called into question as the cause of the increase.  None of those theories has been supported by research.

There have been studies that blame older sperm as the cause. While it was interesting to hear that older sperm rather than older eggs were the cause, the theory too has not been supported by independent research.  Other studies have blamed genetics and/or drug use.  All of these theories have also been debunked.

One of the interesting phenomena is that as the number of people on the spectrum has increased the identification of other disability groups has decreased leading one to believe that there may not actually be in increase in people on the spectrum.  But rather a refinement of how we are identifying the various disabilities.

Regardless of the why, there is a critical need to improve services to these individuals.  If it is true that some of these people were previously identified with a different disability, the treatment for autism is very different from those other disabilities and services will need to be created to meet those needs.  Adult individuals who have not received assistance in life skills adaptation are going to need that remedial instruction as adults.

The literature is full of “look back” studies in which it is determined that many famous people were on the spectrum from Thomas Jefferson to Albert Einstein and have been identified as possibly on the spectrum.

So the truth might be that these folks were living in the woodwork all along we just got around to figuring where they were hiding.

 

 

 

So what's the minimum?

 So, What’s the Minimum

Right now, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.   That’s pretty low and it’s hard to believe that anyone could live on that amount of money.  But some folks get are paid even less.

Under a law dating back to the 1930’s, employers can receive a special certificate and pay workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage.  This is the 14(c) certificate.

We regularly read about workers not being able to live on the $15/hour wage that many states have adopted for typical workers.

Disability advocates have strongly argued that this provision of the law is preventing people with disabilities from gaining any independence.  The provision is called the 14( c) provision.

The Labor Department has now determined that it is going to open a review of the law.  It is asking stake holders to come forth and talk about their experiences with the program and what changes are needed to expand equal opportunity experiences for people with disabilities.

The review comes after expressed concerns from the Government Accountablilty Office, the National Council on Disabilities, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the Labor Department’s Advisory Committee on Increasing Competitive Integrative Employment.  

In May, dozen disability organizations called on the Labor Department to issue a moratorium on the issuance of new certificates that allow employers access to this below minimum wage option.  

Sixteen states have passed legislation banning the practice.  The president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities and the time has come to move away from this program.  She said it has created subminimum and segregated employment situations.   Many years ago, sheltered workshops provided daytime employment for people with disabilities.  Wages were based on the number of pieces a worker could produce in an hour.  These workshops were disallowed and have ceased to exist.  But the continuation of 14( c) certificates, allowing employers to pay less than $7.25 an hour to a person with a disability, is the same situation just dressed differently.

Everything Old is new again

 Everything old is new again

 

Many years ago children with less than typical intelligence were called retarded.   It was decided that was unkind so now those individuals are called intellectually disabled.

What else has changed besides a better vocabulary?  Sadly not so much.

Years ago students with limited intelligence were classified as “trainable”.  They attended school and were taught to handle daily living skills and to do repetitive job tasks.  Their teachers were often acknowledged by administrators as being the weakest teachers.   I was told by an assistant superintendent of a local school system that they “assigned the teachers who couldn’t teach to the students who couldn’t learn.  No harm no foul”.

Today these youngsters still get the weakest teachers, because the unions do everything they can to keep these people from being terminated.  What else is the district to do with them.  If you go into one of the classes for the intellectually disabled you are most likely to attend a “movie day” when students are watching a movie.  On another day you might see the students coloring very primary looking worksheets.  Or perhaps doing some simple craft. 

Years ago, when these students aged out of school they attended “sheltered workshops” where they were paid pennies for piece work.  The tasks were repetitive such as stuffing plastic flatware into bags for restaurants or packaging marketing materials for give-a-ways.   But those facilities were outlawed as being exploitive and they were.  But they did provide a social setting and a sense of work.

Today, federal funds are provided for agencies to offer work training and daily activities.   Sometimes the adults work in cohorts at airports or other large facilities as cleanup crews with a non-disabled supervisor.  At these jobs they earn minimum wage.  Problem is there are not enough federal funds to provide service to all of the individuals who need the help.  So those people without the federal funding support get to stay at home.

Years ago, transition services were almost nonexistent.  Transition services are supposed to assist the individual in making the transition from school to work.

Today every school has transition service.   But the service is so poorly staff it is like dragging one chicken leg through several gallons of water and calling it chicken soup.  It is not unusual for one transition specialist to be responsible for over 100 students! Hardly sufficient staff to help anyone.

Everything new might not be as good as everything old.  Sometimes the good old days really were.

When is due process not due process?

 When is due process not due process?            

 

Federal and state law guarantees families the right to due process in seeking an appropriate education for their children.  The laws are really very clear.  There is even a stipulation in the law that the parents’ legal fees will be reimbursed by the school district if they win at the hearing.  Sounds good right?   But some school districts have figured out a way to deny due process while seeming to be cooperative.

This is how it all works.   Parents can go to mediation.  That is a process where both sides present their position to an independent mediator.  It is supposed to be a less expensive way and a less litigious way for issues to be settled.  However, families need to hire an attorney for the process and if they win, they do NOT get reimbursed so they are out that money.  If the parents don’t get what they want for their child, they go to a formal due process hearing that will cost them more money.  They can’t count on winning and getting their legal fees back.  Since Maryland law changed a number of years ago, the party proposing the placement has the burden of proof.   In over 98% of the cases, the party proposing the placement is the parent.  So even though the law says that the school district MUST provide a free and appropriate education for a child with special needs, the burden to prove that is on the parents NOT the Maryland school district. There was a bill in last year’s legislature to return the burden of proof to the school district but it failed to get out of committee.

School districts have attorneys on retainer.  These people are experienced at delaying tactics that cost the families money.  Very often money they can barely afford.  Once the hearing date is set, the school district attorney tells the hearing officer and the family how many days the school district expects for presenting their side of the case.  The school district attorneys add multiple witnesses and days to the hearing.  Often saying that their side will need 6-7 days to present.  Families then need to pay their attorney for those days plus days for the families’ case.  At $400/ hour or more, few families can afford this cost.  Additionally, the hearing officers are trained by the state so they tend to lean that way.  In fact, before the burden of proof was switched to the family, parents won 97% of the cases.   Now with the change to the burden of proof being on the party proposing the change, families only win about 8% of the cases.

Due process isn’t due process if this isn’t a fair fight.  Taxpayers don’t win either because that highly paid school district attorney not only has a retainer but he/she also gets an additional hourly fee for that extended hearing.  And since these are attack attorneys, they get paid top hourly dollars in addition to the retainer they have already received.

The system has been corrupted.   Taxpayers are spending huge sums for legal fees; parents can’t afford to fight the district.   Then there is the child- oh right-wasn’t the child the one due process was set up to protect?

Some parents aren't doing enough

 Some parents are not doing enough?

 

Have you ever noticed that there are some parents who never show up to volunteer?  Maybe do not even attend conferences or respond to email in a timely fashion?

Did you know that over 1/4^th of all families in our country are led by a single parent?

And yes, there is a connection between the two.   The majority of households led by a single parent are led by a woman.  The average salary in the US for a woman between the ages of 35-57 is about $57,000.  The average single parent has two children.  The majority of single women households are either the only income producing parent or are struggling to get child support paid on time or at all.

Single parents have at least two full time jobs, if they are fortunate.  The first job is the one that is fixing dinner, buying clothes, packing lunches, arranging day care or after school care, balancing the family budget and making arrangements for child care when a child is sick.  The second job is the one that is bringing in that $57,000.  When a single parent gets home from work, the first job starts.  There are notes and notices from school, dinner to fix, homework to get done, baths and getting ready for bed.  When mom finally collapses (and single parents with custody are overwhelmingly moms), is it any wonder that emails from school and/or volunteer opportunities get overlooked.  Evening meetings represent a new round of child care challenges.  You can forget about “me” time or heaven forbid, adult social time.

What does this mean to the children we face in the classroom every day.   Yearbooks, class trips, may not be covered by very limited disposable income.  Fashionable logoed clothes might be out too.  These kinds of situations can create behavior problems for kids.  No one likes to be the low person on the totem pole.  Kids don’t like to feel that their parents can’t provide for them. They are torn between protecting their parents and wanting to be like the other kids. Teachers often blame kids when parents are unresponsive. 

Education is a critical service for a child’s future success.  Education works best when parent(s) and teachers are linked in tandem to help pull the sleigh.  Those of us in education need to figure out a way for single parents to be full participants in their child’s education.

The reason some parents are doing enough is that they are already doing too much.

AI might write a very nice IEP

 AI Could write that IEP

 

How do you expect teachers to teach with all the paperwork that is now required for special education?   One of the biggest time eaters is writing that IEP (Individual Education Plan).  Now AI is to the rescue.

Some educators are pondering the use of ChatGPT or BARD to lift the burden.

In order for the rescue to work, the algorithms need to be flexible enough to account for all the individual differences in children.

There are multiple factors of good news and bad news.  There is no question that the idea of minimizing paperwork would be hugely appealing to teachers who could then spend more time actually teaching.  But these forms include very personal and sensitive information.  Using the platform that could be accessed by the public is risky and possibly even illegal.

IEP’s delineate the individual goals for each child.  But the possible repertoire of goals is limited to the knowledge base of the teacher or school district supplied resources.  AI has the potential of providing a huge repository of existing IEP language.  Will these goals meet the legal standard of substantially addressing the unique individual needs of a particular student, or can only a human do that?

Could AI assist in other ways?  Could AI, for example, provide voice assistants to narrate text for visually impaired students.  Or perhaps, translate text from English to a student’s original language?  What about using AI for children with dysgraphia?  Could AI help in writing papers?  Students would still need to be taught how to use the tool.  The other question is will using the tool teach the child how to improve his/her writing or just provide a work-around that is a crutch.  Then again if your leg is broken, what’s so bad about using a crutch.

The road ahead is forked.  Educators can do what they are best known for doing and that is to put their head in the underground and just try to avoid the issue.   Or they can acknowledge that these platforms exist and perhaps if controlled or understood could actually make like not just easier but maybe even better for the student’s IEP.  

Of course, the final question to ask is: If a teacher does not have the capacity to create a high-quality IEP that is unique to the child’s needs, does it really matter if AI creates one but the teacher can’t deliver it?

Because it's mandated

 Because it’s mandated

 

In Maryland, people whose jobs put them in positions of responsibility for children are required by law to report ANY suspicion of child harm to the local child protective services.  That means ANY thing a child might say or do that suggests a child is in danger. 

A person who "violates this section of the code is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction is subject to a fine not exceeding $10,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 3 years or both. (c) This section applies only to a failure to report child abuse or neglect that occurs during the time the child is a minor."  If the individual has a license to practice his/her profession that license can be lost.   Child protective services bear the responsibility to investigate the seriousness of the event.

Pretty extreme don’t you think?  Well not exactly.  Children who are abused have life-long impacts both mentally and physically.  Depression, suicidal ideation and anxiety become lifetime challenges. Establishing relationships with partners is very difficult, especially if the partner does not fully understand the comprehensive damage of abuse.   Addiction to drugs and alcohol are also common to help deaden the flashbacks.  IBS, acid-reflux, even esophageal cancer can be physical manifestations of abuse.

What if I am just a "bystander", a neighbor or someone in a store.  The law does not require you to report.  If you care about the protection of children, your conscience should demand that you do.

The beginning of help for these children is to be believed. That means sometimes professionals have to recognize the unthinkable- some parents harm their children. That is why regardless of how outlandish the report from the child may seem to the caregiver, the child must be believed enough to allow for follow-up investigation and examination by a physician.

Johns Hopkins hospital has established the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse as part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

There are 24 child advocacy centers in Maryland.  In these centers, social workers, law enforcement, doctors, prosecutors and child advocates work together to support kids who have been abused.  

But hey, isn’t this overkill?   Let’s get real, do we report parents when kids say they have been spanked- yep you better had.  Because you are only the reporter NOT the investigator.  And the very first step to eliminating child abuse is to BELIEVE the child.  The rest will sort itself out after a full investigation.  And YES- there are real consequences to both YOU and the child if you don’t fulfill what you are required by law to do