Autism Commission 3-14 Year Olds Sub-Committee Meeting Minutes
June 27, 2016, 3:00pm-5:00pm
500 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA
Carolyn Kain, Executive Director of the Autism Commission called the meeting to order at 3:10pm and welcomed the members to the first meeting of this Sub-Committee. Ms. Kain stated that the meeting was subject to the Open meeting Law and that the Sub-Committee members present would need to vote to approve the remote participation of some members because of their geographic location, whenever any members were utilizing video and/or tele-conferencing. There were no members participating remotely at this meeting. Carolyn Kain is the Chair of this sub-Committee; the other members in attendance were Sarah Geldart, Tere Ramos and Cindie Neilson.
The meeting began with the members doing introductions of themselves and their roles working with individuals with autism spectrum disorder. They then discussed the Children’s autism waiver and the coverage of MassHealth for ABA services. Tere Ramos brought up the issue of language access and that many service providers do not have staffing to serve families for whom English is a second language, including providers available through MassHealth. She also said that one of the issues the group would need to discuss is the families who are in shelters and getting services for those children.
Carolyn Kain mentioned the Autism Support Centers and the need to determine how they were reaching families of children 3-14 years of age, given that many families may not know about them. Tere Ramos talked about determining if there are language access issues with the Autism Support Centers and that she would contact them in Spanish to see if they have resources in place to assist families. Tere mentioned the requirements that exist whenever a population meets a 5% threshold and that usually is for the Spanish population. Tere said she would forward communications with DDS from Mass. Advocates for Children.
Carolyn Kain mentioned that the PQA department of DESE could be helpful to parents on issues involving compliance with special education services and that she wanted to look at their referring parents to the BSEA when they were issues of compliance and not issues of dispute given that PQA has the ability to directly address issues of compliance. Tere Ramos said that she is currently on the State-wide Special Education Parent Advisory Council. She said that they have advised the Board of Education on issues of economic access, disability and mental health and restrain procedures. She said she would share this information with the group. Sarah Geldart talked about the work at DESE including 25 Summer Institutes, one of which,isfor general education teacher working with individuals with ASD. Sarah also said that DESE was also looking at having 4-5 graduate level courses on working with the ASD population.
Sarah also talked about having a mentorship program between Districts who are doing with in working with students with ASD and them assisting other district by sharing their best practices and programs.
The group discussed how the main provider for children 3-14 years of age are their public school districts and that parents have been supplementing that programing with ABA services through their private insurers or MassHealth and that for a limited number of individuals there are services available through the Children’s waiver program or the DDS/DESE residential prevention program, and that they wanted to ensure that families know about and can access all services that are available to them. They also discussed the role of the Federation of Children with Special Needs being a resource to connect them to community groups to address any cultural, linguistic or economic barriers.
The next scheduled sub-committee meeting is to be held on Monday, July 18th from 2pm-4pm, at 500 Harrison Ave, 1st floor conference room. There being no further business, upon motion duly made, seconded and approved, Ms. Kain adjourned the meeting at 4:45pm.