The Politics of Autism discusses the dangers facing autistic people, including wandering and drowning.
From the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate:
Ahead of the 4th of July weekend, the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) and the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS) are expanding their Autism, Wandering & Water Safety awareness campaign focused on drowning prevention and emergency preparation for children with autism. The safety campaign includes a dedicated webpage mass.gov/AutismWaterSafety, with tools and strategies to help prevent these deaths.
The campaign includes videos in English and Spanish featuring a local mother whose child is autistic and has in the past wandered away, with information about tools to help caregivers keep their children safe.
Jonaki Mehta and Janet W. Lee at NPR:
Kids with autism are 160 times more likely than other children to die from drowning, according to a seminal 2017 study from Columbia University. In fact, in Florida, most children drown in backyard pools. That's largely because about half of autistic children have a tendency to wander from safe settings. That fact, combined with an attraction to water can make for a dangerous combination. Quality swim lessons can help.
That's one of the reasons Mackenzie's parents enrolled her in Swim Buddies, the YMCA of South Florida's low-cost program aimed at children with disabilities. It's also why the state of Florida, which has one of the highest childhood drowning rates in the nation, is expanding a voucher program on July 1 that will put children ages 1-7 who have autism at the front of the line for subsidized swim lessons. "We have tragic circumstances and stories across the state of Florida of young children with autism that are wandering away, they're eloping from their homes, from their classrooms," says Florida state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat, and one of the lawmakers who sponsored the bipartisan bill that changed the state's swim vouchers.
