Ranking State Services

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss state services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

On September 20, United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) issued the 2016 Case for Inclusion, an annual report and interactive website tracking state-by-state community living standards for Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD). The Case for Inclusion examines data  for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, ranking each on key indicators.

The best:

1. Arizona
2. Vermont
3. New Hampshire
4. Michigan
5. Hawaii
6. California
7. District of Columbia
8. Missouri
9. South Dakota
10. Maryland

The worst:

42. Idaho
43. Wyoming
44. Oklahoma
45. Iowa
46. North Dakota
47. Illinois
48. Montana
49. Arkansas
50. Texas
51. Mississippi

Trump Foundation Funds Antivax Movement

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential campaigns.   In this campaign, a number of posts have discussed Trump's support for the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.  He also has a bad record on disability issues more generally.

Tim Mak reports at The Daily Beast:

Donald Trump has not only spread dangerous misinformation about the links between vaccines and autism, but he’s also given money to the anti-vaxxer cause.

His monetary support for the conspiracy theory came in the form of a $10,000 check to an anti-vaccine charity run by former Playboy model and television host Jenny McCarthy.

Trump’s monetary and moral support for McCarthy’s discredited ideas have real, harmful effects—they contribute to the mainstreaming of a conspiracy theory at a time when parents are increasingly deciding to opt out of vaccines despite medical advice.


McCarthy has been a vocal opponent of chemicals in vaccines since 2007, citing discredited studies and experiences with her autistic son. “The University of Google is where I got my degree from,” she once said in an interview.

She put her misinformed views into action by leading an anti-vaccine nonprofit called Generation Rescue, which the Republican nominee’s controversial Trump Foundation charity contributed to in 2010, according to nonprofit records.

Two additional points.  One, though the Trump Foundation bears his name, he has not actually given any money to it since 2008.  

Two, Trump's buffonery is often amusing, but his antivax nonsense puts children in jeopardy.  As I wrote a year ago:

Trump is hardly the first politician to spout misinformation – but in this case, it is downright dangerous.  If parents take him seriously and delay vaccinations, their children could catch the diseases that the vaccines prevent.  And some of these diseases can be deadly.

FAPE Case to the Supreme Court

In The Politics of Autism, I write about IEPs:

At these meetings, the district has several advantages, starting with Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley (1982), the first IDEA case to reach the Supreme Court. Amy Rowley was a hearing-impaired girl whose parents wanted her to have a qualified sign-language interpreter in all of her academic classes. The Court said that the district was already supplying her with sufficient supports, and that the law did not require this additional step. Even though the legislation’s sponsors said that its goal was educational equality, the majority found that there was no substantive language in the statute itself regarding the level of education that children with disabilities must get:

While Congress sought to provide assistance to the States in carrying out their constitutional responsibilities to provide equal protection of the laws, it did not intend to achieve strict equality of opportunity or services for handicapped and nonhandicapped children, but rather sought primarily to identify and evaluate handicapped children, and to provide them with access to a free public education. The Act does not require a State to maximize the potential of each handicapped child commensurate with the opportunity provided nonhandicapped children.[i]

[i] Board of Education v. Rowley, 458 US 176, at 177.  Online: http://supreme.justia.com/us/458/176/case.html.

At Education Week, Mark Walsh reports that the Supreme Court has granted review in an important case about the meaning a free appropriate public education.

The case, Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1 (No. 15-827), raises an important question that has divided federal appeals courts: What level of educational benefit must a child receive under his or her individualized education program, or IEP, to satisfy the demands of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver, ruled last year in the case of a Colorado child with autism that because the child's public school IEP had provided him with "some educational benefit," the Douglas County district had provided a "free, appropriate public education" under the IDEA.

The 10th Circuit court thus rejected a private school reimbursement for the parents of the boy identified as Endrew F. after the parents had pulled him from public school amid the dispute over his 5th grade IEP.

In an August 2015 decision, the 10th Circuit court panel acknowledged that several other federal courts of appeals have adopted a higher standard that requires an IEP to result in a "meaningful educational benefit."

But the 10th Circuit, agreeing with a lower court in Endrew F.'s case, said that a key 1982 Supreme Court precedent on special education, Board of Education of the Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley, merely requires an IEP to provide "some educational benefit."

Brown Signs Bill to Address Dangers on the School Bus

In The Politics of Autism, I write about the everyday struggles facing autistic people and their families -- such as dangers on the school bus.

KCAL-TV reports:

The parents of a special-needs student who died after being left on a school bus in Whittier on a hot summer day thanked Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday for signing legislation that requires school buses to have an alarm system to ensure students are not left behind.

“Although we tragically lost our son Paul last year after he was left behind on a school bus for seven hours, we know that the signing of this bill is a warm hug from heaven that will enable all children who ride a school bus to arrive at their destination safely,” said Eun Ha Lee, mother of Hun Joon “Paul” Lee.

The 19-year-old with autism died after being left on a bus for nine hours in 90-degree heat Sept. 11, 2015.

Senate Bill 1072 or the Paul Lee School Bus Safety Law, authored by Sen. Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, will require school buses in California to be equipped with child-safety alarms beginning 2018.

The alarm system triggers a loud sound when the bus is turned off. The driver must walk to the back of the bus to turn off the alarm, and at the same time check to make sure no students are still on board.

Proposed ABLE Act Changes

 The Politics of Autism includes a discussion of the ABLE Act.

A September 21 release from Senator Richard Burr (R-NC):

The Senate Finance Committee today advanced the ABLE to Work Act and the ABLE Financial Planning Act – two bills sponsored by Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) and Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) aimed at enhancing ABLE accounts. The ABLE to Work Act builds on the success of the ABLE Act by making it possible for people with disabilities who work to save an additional amount in an ABLE account without risking loss of benefits. The ABLE Financial Planning Act will allow financial rollovers from 529 college savings plans to ABLE accounts.
...
Background:

The ABLE to Work Act expands on the goals of the ABLE Act by encouraging work and self-sufficiency. The legislation allows individuals and their families to save more money in an ABLE account if the beneficiary works and earns income. Specifically, an ABLE beneficiary who earns income from a job could save up to the Federal Poverty Level, which is currently at $11,770. The bill will also allow ABLE beneficiaries to qualify for the existing Saver's Credit when they put savings in.

Text of the ABLE to Work Act is available here.

The ABLE Financial Planning Act would allow families to rollover savings in a 529 college savings plan into an ABLE account. Many families save for a child’s college education by opening a 529 account, sometimes before their child is even born, only to learn later that their child has a severe disability like autism. In other cases, a child could incur a disability from a tragic accident. In such instances, these families have funds trapped in a 529 that they could use to help cover their child’s lifelong expenses. If they withdraw the funds for anything other than college expenses, they face taxes on their withdrawals. The ABLE Financial Planning Act would help these families by allowing them to rollover the funds in their 529 account into an ABLE account for their child.

Text of the ABLE Financial Planning Act is available here.

In 2014, the bipartisan group of lawmakers led the effort to pass the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act, which lets families who have a child with a disability save for their long-term care through 529-style savings accounts. The ABLE Act was a significant step forward and has been heralded as one of the most important pieces of disability legislation since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Read Senator Burr’s op-ed on the ABLE Act here.

A Dubious Event

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.

Seema Yasmin writes at The Dallas Morning News:

An autism summit in Dallas this weekend features medical professionals who have been disciplined for mistreating children, alongside celebrities who shun science and claim vaccines are dangerous. Autism advocates say the event offers false hope to parents by promoting miracle cures and treatments proved to be dangerous and ineffective.

The Autism Education Summit is hosted by Generation Rescue, an organization co-founded by anti-vaccine advocate Jenny McCarthy, who has a son with autism. McCarthy will be joined by Bexar County District Attorney Nico Lahood, who also claims vaccines cause autism.

...

"A number of these speakers are opportunists and predators who prey on the fears and the desperation of parents who have kids with autism," said Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatrician at Baylor Medical Center in Houston whose daughter has autism. "I understand how desperate and hopeless a parent can feel having a child with autism and it doesn't get better with age because now we're dealing with a young adult with autism."

Studies show one third to 43 percent of families pay for sometimes costly and often unproven alternative treatments for children with autism.

Hotez is concerned that the autism summit is using high-profile speakers to sell false hope to parents like him. "These speakers are offering every type of flim-flam therapy you can imagine, from hyperbaric oxygen therapy to chelation. There's one guy who says autism is caused by parasitic worms," Hotez said.

Autism and Employment

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the employment of autistic adults.

Abigail Abrams writes at The Washington Post:

Federal law obligates educators to help children with disabilities develop a plan for entering adulthood, but a2014 report from the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute found that just 58 percent of high school students with autism had such a plan by the required age. Once individuals with autism leave the education system, they lose access to support services, specialized counselors and the routine of a structured environment.

“When people hit 21, they call it a cliff. The services really do fall off, particularly for individuals who have gone to college, because I think the expectation is that, ‘Well you’ve made it through college, getting a job should be the easy part,’ ” said Marcia Scheiner, who runs a program based in New York to help adults with Asperger’s syndrome — a mild kind of autism — find competitive jobs. She started the program after seeing the challenges her own son faced because of Asperger’s.

The 2014 report found that two-thirds of young people with autism did not move on to employment or other education in the first two years after leaving high school, and for more than a third, this continued into their 20s. Young adults with autism were also more likely to be unemployed than their peers with other disabilities. Employment data is scarce for autistic individuals, but researchers have estimated that between 70 and 90 percent of autistic people are unemployed or underemployed nationally.

“Until we as a society, from government through everything, see that a nation that has a 70 percent unemployment rate for people with autism and people with disabilities is a problem, it ain’t going to work. We have to make a critical commitment that this is wrong,” said Scott Badesch, president of the Autism Society, a national advocacy group.

Rumor Communities

In The Politics of Autism, I analyze the discredited notion that vaccines cause autism.

At Social Science Quarterly, Jill A. Edy andErin E. Risley-Baird have an article titled "Rumor Communities: The Social Dimensions of Internet Political Misperceptions."  The abstract:

Objective

This study illuminates the communicative and social qualities of naturally occurring public resistance to authoritative debunking of political misperceptions, rumors, and conspiracy theories. Developing the concept of a “rumor community,” it highlights aspects of rumoring processes overlooked by psychological approaches common in misperception research.

Methods

Over 2,000 user-generated comments from the “vaccines cause autism” rumor community, produced as the medical study that had sparked the rumor was retracted and ultimately denounced as fraudulent, are examined for their contribution to the public conversation about vaccine safety.

Results

Rumor community members publicly counterargue debunking messages, which creates a communication environment offering argumentative resources to community members and reaffirming the community's solidarity. Members assert their credibility to gain authority to speak, countering science with personal experience. Highlighting their interconnection with more conventional social groups and venerable social truisms, members generate discourse that legitimates their beliefs.

Conclusions

The process of rumor debunking does not solely involve psychological persuasion but must also account for the social geography of rumor communities and their contributions to the communication environment.

From the article:

Little is known about how such source credibility claims impact audiences, but enticing anecdotal evidence suggests eyewitness authority may be distinctively powerful in online political communication. Research in another online political context revealed that factual evidence was contested, but personal experience was accepted as incontrovertible (van Zoonen et al., 2007). The rumor community’s personal experiences may thus be a uniquely powerful tool for resisting the scientific discourse in debunking messages.

...

The response of the vaccines-cause-autism rumor community to repeated debunking of its central raison d’etre reveals ongoing work to preserve ambiguity. Anecdotal evidence from other high-profile political misperceptions, such as the “birther” community, suggests this may be a typical response from a threatened rumor community. This  lluminates the function of some psychological counterarguing that may undermine attempts to debunk rumors. Yet, a second challenge for rumor debunking arises  pecifically from public expression of counterarguments. Public counterarguments may serve as a source of social support for the rumor community, reminding members that others share their beliefs and providing them with new resources for resisting debunking  essages. Recognizing that rumor believers not only hold beliefs individually but may also participate in communities that help them sustain their beliefs suggests the process of rumor debunking is not just one of psychological persuasion but must also take into account the social geography of rumor communities. Indeed, future research on political misperceptions should investigate whether members of a rumor community develop a group identity such that renouncing a misperception carries the risk of social sanctions from fellow group members. Future research should also explore interactions between community members in public spaces, for while public expressions of shared belief may be enough to sustain a community, building it is almost certainly an interactive process.

The ways rumor community members establish credibility to address the misperception also reveals a communication environment much changed from that of early studies of how public officials regained control of a rumor. The more diffuse political  ommunication environment made possible by the Internet (Stroud, 2008), and the decline in widely accepted social authority (Quandt, 2012), may mean social authorities may have less power to stymie rumors than earlier scholars ascribed to them (e.g., Larsen, 1954). Eyewitness authority grounded in personal experience may trump official or scientific explanations in Internet contexts, raising new challenges for those seeking to debunk misperceptions.

A rumor’s survival may depend not only on preserving ambiguity, contesting institutional authority, and providing social support to a community of believers. Misperceptions may also survive because they effectively express venerable truisms of political culture. Many of the vaccines-cause-autism rumor community’s comments express widely shared political stances and social values such as distrust of big business, government, and news media. They also express solidarity with respected social groups, parents, and the autism community. A modernist take on these types of appeals might classify them as conspiracy theories, amplifying the unlikely and elaborate connections between social actors implied in such theories. However, the essential appeal of many conspiracy theories is that they speak to deep-rooted beliefs about how the social world works. The more effectively they embrace those beliefs, the greater their likely staying power and the greater the risk they will not only survive but potentially spread to broader publics.

• Larsen, O. N. 1954. “Rumors in a Disaster.” Journal of Communication 111–23
• Quandt, T. 2012. “What’s Left of Trust in a Network Society? An Evolutionary Model and Critical Discussion of Trust and Societal Communication.” European Journal of Communication 27(1):7–21.
• Stroud, N. J. 2008. “Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure.” Political Behavior 30:341–66.
• van Zoonen, L., F. Muller, D. Alinejad, M. Dekker, L. Duits, P. Vis, and W. Wittenberg. 2007. “Dr. Phil Meets the Candidates: How Family Life and Personal Experience Produce Political Discussions.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 24(4):322–38.

Autistic People Face Barriers to Health Care

The Politics of Autism discusses health care, and explains that autism services can be complicated, creating difficulties for autistic people and their families. 

Dora Raymaker and colleagues have an article in Autism titled "Barriers to Healthcare: Instrument Development and Comparison between Autistic Adults and Adults with and without other Disabilities."  The abstract:

Our objective was to use a community-based participatory research approach to identify and compare barriers to healthcare experienced by autistic adults and adults with and without other disabilities. To do so, we developed a Long- and Short-Form instrument to assess barriers in clinical and research settings. Using the Barriers to Healthcare Checklist–Long Form, we surveyed 437 participants (209 autistic, 55 non-autistic with disabilities, and 173 non-autistic without disabilities). Autistic participants selected different and greater barriers to healthcare, particularly in areas related to emotional regulation, patient-provider communication, sensory sensitivity, and healthcare navigation. Top barriers were fear or anxiety (35% (n = 74)), not being able to process information fast enough to participate in real-time discussions about healthcare (32% (n = 67)), concern about cost (30% (n = 62)), facilities causing sensory issues 30% ((n = 62)), and difficulty communicating with providers (29% (n = 61)). The Long Form instrument exhibited good content and construct validity. The items combined to create the Short Form had predominantly high levels of correlation (range 0.2–0.8, p < 0.001) and showed responsiveness to change. We recommend healthcare providers, clinics, and others working in healthcare settings to be aware of these barriers, and urge more intervention research to explore means for removing them.

From the article:

In summary, autistic adults experience many similar barriers to healthcare access as people with other types of disabilities; however, they experience them at higher rates, and also experience unique autism-specific barriers that may be less likely to be addressed in modern healthcare systems.

Autistic adults in our study experienced many of the barriers identified in studies of adults with other disabilities, such as increased socio-economic barriers, difficulty getting sufficient support, and discrimination (World Health Organization (WHO), 2011; WHO, 2013). There were also similarities between the autistic and disability groups in barriers related to executive functioning. Difficulties with planning, sequencing, and understanding complex instructions are reported by many individuals on the spectrum (Landa and Goldberg, 2005) as well as by others (e.g. those with traumatic brain injury, intellectual disability, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder). Interventions targeted toward improving healthcare access for people with disabilities more generally may also help autistic people, and existing literature and interventions related to these items may be transferrable to autistic patients.

Results also reflect the differences in barriers autistic individuals may experience due to characteristics associated with ASD; specifically, barriers related to emotional regulation, patient-provider communication, and sensory issues.
...
We recommend that clinicians, disability support professionals, and policy makers be aware of the barriers to healthcare access commonly faced by individuals on the autism spectrum, and work with individuals and systems to reduce those barriers.

• Lagu T, Iezzoni LI and Lindenauer PK (2014) The axes of access–improving care for patients with disabilities. The New England Journal of Medicine 370: 1847–1851.
• World Health Organization (WHO) (2011) World Report on Disability. Geneva, Switzerland:WHO.
• World Health Organization (WHO) (2013) WHO | Disability and health. Available at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs352/en/index.html

Junk Science and Autism

Junk science is a big problem for the autism community, whether it involves the discredited vaccine theory or the bogus "complementary and alternative" treatments that unscrupulous vendors peddle to desperate parents.

In The Politics of Autism, I write:

Many articles and blog posts arguing for the vaccine-autism link have the trappings of genuine academic research: tables, graphs, citations, and scientific jargon. Some of the authors have credentials such as M.D. or Ph.D. degrees. None of these things is a guarantee of scientific value, as the history of science is full of crackpot theories (e.g., AIDS denialism) that are the heavily-footnoted products of people with letters after their names. But most people will not be able to spot the scientific weaknesses of such work. Outside of academia, few understand concepts such as peer review. Jordynn Jack describes one dubious article that appeared in a non-peer-reviewed publication: “Regardless of the scientific validity of the article, though, the writers perform the writing style quite effectively. It would be difficult for the layperson to distinguish this article from any other scientific research paper, especially if one did not investigate the nature of the journal … or of the scientific response to the article.”

Alisa Opar writes at The Atlantic and Spectrum:

For most parents, who have little understanding of how science is done, wading through claims made about alternative treatments can be befuddling. Even when someone knows to search PubMed, an online database of journal abstracts, she might not understand that obscure journals tend not to be taken seriously, and might not pick up on the difference between types of studies. A case report about a single child may be of purely scientific interest as an avenue for further investigation, for instance, whereas results from a rigorous randomized controlled clinical trial with a large number of participants can provide solid information on whether a treatment works.

What’s more, media outlets often exaggerate the significance of findings. Take secretin, a peptide hormone that stimulates the secretion of digestive fluids from the pancreas. In the late 1990s, three children with autism were reported to improve dramatically after taking secretin. (The caveat is that this was an unblinded study—that is, the investigators were aware that all three children had received secretin and not a placebo.) Word spread, parents heard about it on the news, and demand for secretin skyrocketed. But more than a dozen subsequent double-blind studies—in which neither the families nor the researchers knew which participants were in the placebo arm—found no evidence of effectiveness.

“As a scientist, you can end up on the front page of the science section of The New York Times with a new link to autism, but not really know if it’s causal,” says Catherine Lord, a clinical psychologist who heads the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. In other words, just because researchers find a connection between autism and a gene or some other factor does not mean that it causes the condition—or that blocking it can reverse the effects of autism. “I think it’s probably very confusing for parents. So when someone says, ‘I can take what that scientist said and make it meaningful for you right now,’ that’s incredibly appealing.”

Clinton's Speech on Disability

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the issue's role in presidential campaigns.  As I explain in the book, Hillary Clinton has a long history with the issue,

John Wagner and Abby Phillip write at The Washington Post:

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is pushing intensively to win over a group of voters who don’t typically get much attention during elections but who have become an increasingly potent political force: disabled people and their families.

With the race tighter than it was a month ago and Clinton struggling to generate enthusiasm within the Democratic base, her appeal to disabled people and their families comes amid a broader effort to win over voters. After weeks of mostly attacking Republican Donald Trump, she is highlighting specific policy prescriptions while trying to show a more compassionate side and present an affirmative vision for the country.

Also see a radio report from Tamara Keith.

In Orlando yesterday, Hillary Clinton spoke about her disability policy:

First, we’re going to focus on jobs and incomes. I’m going to fight to give more Americans with disabilities the chance to work alongside those without disabilities and do the same jobs for the same pay and benefits. People with disabilities shouldn’t be isolated. They should be given the chance to work with everyone else. And we’re going to eliminate the subminimum wage, which is a vestige from an ugly, ignorant past. Good work deserves fair pay, no matter who you are.

Second, we’re going to work with our colleges and universities to make them more accessible to students with disabilities. To have a truly inclusive economy, we need a truly inclusive education system. So let’s raise our standards. For too long, accessibility has been an afterthought. Let’s make it a priority in our curriculums, our classrooms, and the technology our students use. It’s like what Anastasia said about her sister. She can communicate through a computer. Then let’s make sure kids who can communicate that way have the opportunity to do so.

Third, we’re going to partner with businesses and other stakeholders to ensure those living with a disability can get hired and stay hired. As part of that, we’ll launch a new effort we’re calling Autism Works to help people with autism succeed in the workplace.

Fourth, let’s build on the success of the Americans with Disabilities Act by finally ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It has the strong backing of leaders across the political spectrum, and it’s a chance to show American values and American leadership. And I have to tell you ever since I was first lady, I have had the great privilege of traveling the world on behalf of our country. When I was secretary of state, I went to 112 countries. And one of the things that I have noticed is how far behind many countries are in how they treat people with disabilities. Very often people with disabilities from the time they are babies and toddlers are locked away, basically forgotten. I want us since we have been the leader in this area to get that ratified and then to demonstrate to other countries what we have done and are doing to give dignity and opportunity to people with disabilities.

At The Atlantic, David Graham notes that disability politics used to be bipartisan.

 In 2012, the Senate failed to ratify a United Nations treaty called the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. Democrats supported the treaty, but Republicans were split. On the pro side were George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole, the former Senate GOP leader and presidential candidate who was injured during World War II. On the con side were a bloc who warned on extremely dubious grounds that the treaty would allow the UN to meddle in U.S. courts. In the end, the treaty failed, despite Dole himself appearing on the Senate floor to lobby. It needed two-thirds of votes to pass, but was only able to garner 61.

The Trump campaign has only exacerbated any such splits. The most egregious moment came when he mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski. Trump falsely claimed he’d seen Muslims celebrating 9/11 in the streets in New Jersey, and pointed to reporting Kovaleski, who was then a reporter for The Washington Post. When Kovaleski, who has a congenital condition affecting his joints, contradicted Trump, Trump mocked him, doing a physical impression of Kovaleski

(Note, however, that passage of the ABLE Act was bipartisan, indeed almost unanimous.)

The Cost of Special Ed? Who Knows?

Uncertainty and complexity are major themes of The Politics of Autism.

Jennifer Guerra reports at MPR:

Figuring out all the different pots of money that go into paying for special education is complicated, but you know what’s even more complicated? Figuring out how much special education in Michigan actually costs. And if we don't know that, we don't know whether we're spending too much or too little on special ed.

It’s so complicated even the people who specialize in school finance can’t figure it out.

The Michigan Legislature last year paid $399,000 to the Colorado-based firm Augenblick Palaich & Associates (APA) to figure out how much an adequate education costs in Michigan, and they came back with an amount: $8,667 per student plus extra for at-risk students and English-language learners.

But there was one glaring omission in the report: the cost of special education.

According to the report, “there was difficulty ensuring that the study team could account for all district expenditures for special education students.”

A Conference in San Francisco

In The Politics of Autism, I discuss the self-advocacy and the neurodiversity movement.

A release from AASCEND – the Autism Aspergers Spectrum Coalition for Education Networking and Development – in partnership with SFSU's Autism Spectrum Studies Program presents its 9th conference on adult autism:

Neurodiversity Leaders 2016: Adult Autism Advances
October 8, 2016
9:00-4:00 (registration begins at 8:15)
Seven Hills Conference Center, 800 Font Blvd
San Francisco State University
SF, CA 94132

The conference salutes neurodiversity and showcases prominent national and local leaders on and off the autism spectrum. The innovative ideas and personal passion of these leaders influence how we live, work and think, inspiring our way forward.

Neurodiversity Leaders 2016 features keynote addresses by Sondra Williams, recipient of the Ohio State Governor's Award for her remarkable journey from traumatic childhood autism to national autism leadership, and by"Hackie" Reitman, M.D., founder of the online neurodiversity community Different Brains, author of Aspertools, and parent of a daughter on the autism spectrum. Hackie is known as The Fighting Surgeon in recognition of his early career as a professional heavyweight boxer.

Michael Bernick, former head of the California State Labor Department, moderates a plenary session showcasing successful career paths for spectrum adults.

A second plenary session features a convocation of leading national autism advocacy organizations addressing the present and future of autism advocacy in America.

Breakout sessions explore Dating on the Spectrum; Sports and Autism; Autism Employment in the Arts; Supports for College Success, Diagnosis and Disclosure; LinkedIn as an Employment Tool; and AASCEND's path-breaking Autism Job Club

Ticket price includes lunch and refreshments. Conference registration begins at 8:15am, October 8. Please arrive early. Some program changes are possible.

DETAILS AND TICKETS HERE