ABLE Accounts, Changes and COVID-19

While each individual and family situation is different, we all share a common concern around our financial future during the COVID-19 crisis. This situation affects everyone’s lives at all levels and will continue to impact household finances for a lengthy period of time. Depending on your own specific and unique circumstances, your need to respond will vary. In this blog, the ABLE National Resource Center will share actions for you to consider, resources, stories and […]

Why Training is Needed: Law Enforcement and Autism

Although law enforcement is tasked with keeping the public safe, interactions between first responders and those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or other psychiatric conditions can be contentious—and in some cases, deadly. A 2012 study conducted by researchers at Drexel University measured how common it was for youth with ASD to be stopped and questioned by police or arrested. They found that by age 21, 20 percent of youth with ASD had been stopped by police, […]

National Autism Indicators Report: The Connection Between Autism and Financial Hardship

An autism diagnosis can present a number of challenges for families from learning about the neurodevelopment disorder and accessing support services and resources to financial struggles. A new report from the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University highlighted the financial challenges facing households of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the United States. According to the report, households of children with ASD experience higher levels of poverty, material hardship and medical expenses than […]

Since Schools Have Closed Parents of Special Needs Children ‘wearing many hats’

With 8-year-old triplets who go to school in Encinitas, each one on the autism spectrum, Jeff Ladman and his wife Tara felt “like the rug’s been pulled out from underneath” them when the novel coronavirus pandemic closed schools in mid-March and reduced therapy sessions to online only. Two of their sons, second-graders Keith and Holden, have class with special education and mainstream teachers at Flora Vista and are “high functioning,” Ladman said. The third, Jarrett, […]

Rethinking School Startup for Students with Special Needs

Post-pandemic brings new realities, problem-solving to the issues of mandated transportation for the most vulnerable student population. By Amanda Pampuro Getting vulnerable kids to school has always been challenging, but the spread of COVID-19 brings a whole new set of problems. How do you rearrange the school bus so students with wheelchairs are sitting far enough apart to adhere to physical distancing requirements? How do bus drivers and monitors adhere to those same standards when […]