Allan Schwartz, LCSW, Ph.D. Updated: Oct 10th 2010

 

Tony Danza was one of my favorite actors on the comedy television shows, Taxi and Who’s The Boss. Now, he is on television again but the role he is playing has little to do with entertainment. The new show is called, “Teach: Tony Danza.” In it he is a real teacher of English in an urban Philadelphia High School. I can report that, having been a High School teacher for twenty yeas, this is reality television at its best. The reason for this opinion is that, finally, there is a program that accurately demonstrates what the classroom is really like in all of our urban High Schools. Adding to the grit of the program is that Mr. Danza is a new teacher who is closely supervised and struggles daily with very difficult students.

 

To his credit, Mr. Danza takes full responsibility for poor teaching when half of his class scores low on quizzes. Accurately demonstrating what most new teachers experience, he tries to find ways of teaching that will help his students learn and perform well while not being bored. Having grown up in a tough neighborhood when he was young, and having been a difficult and challenging student himself, Mr. Danza understands the poor motivation of many of his students and has an understanding of them that only similar experience can help someone really know what it is like for High School teenagers.

 

Typical of classrooms throughout the United States, Mr. Danza has, in the same classroom, kids who are intellectually gifted, others who are in special education and others who are average of below. One of the gifted kids complains that the class is too slow for him while others complain that they do not understand what they are reading. Peppered throughout the room are those who sit and stare with bored, glazed-over eyes, demonstrating to total lack of interest. In fact, some of them hold a sarcastic smirk, as though to say, “Ha, I dare you to teach me anything.” Some of them yawn and one can be seen tossing her cell phone into her pocket book.

 

This is truly reality. I know. I was there and remember what it felt like to try to “row against the current” when I was teaching.

 

One of the features of education in the United States today, that is a strong under current of the program, is that the success or failure of the students are the responsibility of the teachers. One administrators lectures Mr. Danza that he “cannot call himself a teacher until he has taught something.”

 

In contrast to this American attitude towards teaching and learning, people living in nations like India, China and elsewhere, the burden of responsibility for learning and succeeding in school is placed squarely on the students and their families. In other words, “If my son fails a subject, it is his fault and mine, as well.

 

Read in Full: 

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=40325&cn=1276

 

Anna McNaughton wants to move to a housing association bungalow in Worthing, but council funding disputes have scuppered her plans. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

Saba Salman

The Guardian, Wednesday 13 October 2010

Disabled people in care who want to live more independently are being prevented from doing so by funding wrangles between local authorities, reports Saba Salman

Anna McNaughton fell in love with the West Sussex seaside town of Worthing when she moved there two years ago. It’s a stone’s throw from Brighton, around an hour by train from London, and its bars, cafes and restaurants are edged by a tree-lined promenade. Having had a room in a shared house since moving, the 23-year-old wants her own space.

The fact that McNaughton has no recognisable speech and is a profoundly physically disabled wheelchair-user doesn’t stop her feeling passionately about her home town. She likes the pedestrianised streets, has local friends and wants to lay down roots. Earlier this year, she found an accessible housing association bungalow that she could part-rent and part-buy under a scheme allowing those with long-term disabilities to secure a specialist mortgage. She began planning her move.

Worthing Pavilion & Promenade

But McNaughton is not moving anywhere. A bureaucratic wrangle over something called ordinary residence has trapped her in residential care, despite the fact that she not only desires but is capable of living more independently.

Defining someone’s ordinary residence is the mechanism that councils and primary care trusts (PCTs) use to decide who should fund an individual’s care. Ordinary residence guidance – and it is guidance, rather than an obligation – is part of the 1948 National Assistance Act. If a council places someone in residential care outside the local authority area, it remains financially responsible. Should the person subsequently move out of care and into supported accommodation in the community, responsibility shifts to the council in which they are based.

But authorities often balk at funding someone not originally from the area, while the councils that originally placed them in out-of-area residential care argue that they are not responsible for funding if the person moves.

This is what happened to McNaughton. East Sussex county council funds her care at a Leonard Cheshire Disability residential home in Worthing – it funded her previous residential care at Treloars college in Hampshire – but if she moves out of the home and into supported housing, her care becomes the financial responsibility of West Sussex county council. Because the latter has refused to fund her, she is in limbo.

Read in Full:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/13/disabled-people-trapped-in-care

 

 

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

By Sarah Firth

HUNDREDS of Notts County Council staff will learn today their jobs are at risk as the authority strives to save millions of pounds.

Staff in the children and young people’s services department found out jobs were at risk earlier this year after the authority revealed plans to cut a total of 3,000 posts.

The department has been told it needs to lose 400 staff from 27 different service areas. Today the staff will find out how many jobs will go from each area.

The job cuts will save £22m over four years.

However, £18m of this needs to be ploughed into children’s social care to cope with a 59 per cent rise in the number of cases referred to the service in just one year.

But this means there have to be cuts in other areas such as the youth offending service, health promotion for young people and support for children with special educational needs.

Councillor Philip Owen, cabinet member for children and young people, said: “This is an opportunity for us to reshape our services and reinvest significant resources to where they are needed most. Difficult decisions need to be made to find the necessary savings.

“Children and young people are a priority for the county council so almost 60 per cent of the department’s savings will be reinvested in crucial services over the next four years.”

He added: “We have set out a range of proposals which ensure greater value for money and help protect vulnerable children at risk by allocating more money for children’s social services and foster care.”

After the cuts, the council is set to deliver only services it is legally bound to in some areas.

It plans to save £3.16m on support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The equivalent of 56.6 full time equivalent posts will be cut and the council acknowledges there will be less support for these children in schools.

But it says it already spends more than the national average per pupil with SEND and will be able to offer more help to children with autism and deafness.

Anthony May, director of children and young people’s services, said: “We have relatively few special schools as we believed the best place for children is in mainstream schools.”

He said this meant Notts schools were well placed to deal with children with special needs and so could cope with a lower level of support.

The council is set to scrap health promotion for young people almost entirely.

Read in Full:  http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Notts-County-Council-unveils-cost-cutting-children-young-people-s-services/article-2745668-detail/article.html

 

Article Date: 12 Oct 2010 – 1:00 PDT

In a study to determine the durability and long-term effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), psychiatric researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found the non-invasive, non-drug therapy to be an effective, long-term treatment for major depression. Results of the study were published in the October 2010 issue of Brain Stimulation, a journal published by Elsevier.

TMS therapy is a non-invasive technique that delivers highly focused magnetic field pulses to a specific portion of the brain, the left prefrontal cortex, in order to stimulate the areas of the brain linked to depression. These pulses are of a similar intensity to the magnetic field produced during an MRI imaging scan. The repeated short bursts of magnetic energy introduced through the scalp excite neurons locally and in connected areas in the brain.

Read in Full:  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/204228.php

 

 

ScienceDaily (Oct. 11, 2010) — The mathematical skills of boys and girls, as well as men and women, are substantially equal, according to a new examination of existing studies in the current online edition of journal Psychological Bulletin.

 

One portion of the new study looked systematically at 242 articles that assessed the math skills of 1,286,350 people, says chief author Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 

These studies, all published in English between 1990 and 2007, looked at people from grade school to college and beyond. A second portion of the new study examined the results of several large, long-term scientific studies, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

 

In both cases, Hyde says, the difference between the two sexes was so close as to be meaningless.

 

Sara Lindberg, now a postdoctoral fellow in women’s health at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, was the primary author of the meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin.

 

The idea that both genders have equal math abilities is widely accepted among social scientists, Hyde adds, but word has been slow to reach teachers and parents, who can play a negative role by guiding girls away from math-heavy sciences and engineering. “One reason I am still spending time on this is because parents and teachers continue to hold stereotypes that boys are better in math, and that can have a tremendous impact on individual girls who are told to stay away from engineering or the physical sciences because ‘Girls can’t do the math.'”

 

Scientists now know that stereotypes affect performance, Hyde adds. “There is lots of evidence that what we call ‘stereotype threat’ can hold women back in math. If, before a test, you imply that the women should expect to do a little worse than the men, that hurts performance. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 

Read in Full: 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101011223927.htm

 

by Satoshi Kanazawa

 

“Overcoming Tourette syndrome and having a child with asperger’s syndrome, Ms. DeWet wanted to channel her experience, knowledge and passions into something new, which resulted in the recent opening of the Assist Autism Foundation …”

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Founder Of Assist Autism Foundation, Author Works To Help Those In Need

Ms. DeWet chronicles what she calls a “tragic childhood” in a recently released book, “A Juicy Joyful Life,” which quickly has become a bestseller.

 

She was barely 17 years old when she graduated from high school in 1988. From there, she went to work as an assistant for a chiropractor. Wanting to become an osteopath, she started nursing school.

Read in Full:  http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20101010/BUSINESS0504/10100306

 

 

By Emily Ashton

Saturday, 9 October 2010

Disabled people will be “pushed even further backwards” in society as they feel the brunt of more than £9bn in welfare cuts over the next five years, a leading think-tank has warned.

The Government’s proposed benefit reforms will see 3.5 million disabled people lose about £9.2bn of critical support by 2015, a report from Demos claims.

Plans to move disabled people on to jobseeker’s allowance will account for half of these losses, it says.

The report, called Destination Unknown, says the reforms will leave more disabled people trapped in long-term unemployment – costing the taxpayer more than at present.

Demos warns that by 2015, families with disabled children could lose more than £3,000 each, and disabled adults whose partner is a full-time carer could lose about £3,000.

Kitty Ussher, director of Demos, said: “The emerging evidence from recent years is that the only way to get those furthest from the labour market back into work is through individual client-led support.

“Cutting the welfare bill is attractive to government in the current climate, but without better support for individuals it threatens to just exclude people further.”

Source:  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/disabled-people-to-lose-1639bn-from-cuts-2101827.html

 

Jade’s trademark was her ability to challenge long-held views about disability in ways that people could understand

Determined adviser to the government on disability matters

Jane Campbell

The disability rights leader Rowen Jade, who has died aged 40 from a chest infection, was pivotal in communicating the views of disabled people to those who hold the purse strings and determine the policies that affect our lives. As chair of Equality 2025 from 2008 onwards, she was the chief adviser to the government on disability matters, and thus held a key position in influencing ministers and civil servants. The disability movement’s mantra – “Nothing about us, without us” – was in safe hands with her. She communicated the experience and dreams of disabled people with great accuracy and unconditional humility.

Born Sharon Mace to Bob and Janet Mace in Oxford, she had a very severe form of spinal muscular atrophy. Typically, doctors predicted she would not live beyond a few years. Indeed, anyone meeting her for the first time, as she lay like a delicate feather in her chaise-longue style wheelchair could be forgiven for thinking: “How does she survive?”

Of course, this apparent frailty was part of her power and gave her a unique ability to challenge stereotypes of disability. She could hardly eat, breath or move and never weighed more than three stone. Yet she had the physical and mental strength to achieve so much.

Thanks to the determination of her parents, she attended a mainstream school, Lord Williams’s school in Thame, where she thrived. At Oxford Brookes University, she achieved a double first in English and law. On leaving, she decided a career in law was not going to feed her creative side, although she was a fierce advocate of social justice. Her first job in disability rights consisted of running empowerment projects for disabled children at the Alliance for Inclusive Education in London.

I first met Rowen in the early 1990s, when she was instrumental in setting up an organisation of disabled people in Oxford. I remember thinking that she was somehow motionlessly hyperactive. This paradox made her a unique human force. Rowen’s trademark was her ability to challenge long-held views about disability in ways that people could understand and accept. Her honest, gentle approach, taking care of everyone she met (especially those who did not agree with her), made her the perfect disabled persons’ advocate.

The early 1990s was also the time when she became involved in the campaign for independent living and the use of direct payments to enable disabled people to employ personal assistants, instead of being dependent upon local authority services. As someone who needed 24-hour support, she clearly described the power relationship between the assisted and the assistor: “If you do not have choice and control over the person who is assisting you, you never have real control over your life. Having PAs enabled me to find out who I am and now enables me to be who I am.”

In 1996 she took the name Rowen Jade. Three years later, the Alliance for Inclusive Education published the report she co-authored with Christine Wilson, Whose Voice Is It Anyway? It captured the experience of young people in special and mainstream schools and was highly influential, much of it finding its way into the government white paper Every Disabled Child Matters.

Read in Full:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/03/rowen-jade-obituary

 

Chammi Rajapatirana is one of many FC users who can type independently. His mother Anoja looks on. Photo: Mike Frandsen

Mike Frandsen

October 9th, 2010 5:47 pm ET

“Thank you for inviting us today. I utterly happy to be here with you. I am a person with autism.”

Chammi Rajapatirana, a 36-year old writer, poet, and advocate with autism, typed those words independently during a presentation about Facilitated Communication (FC) in Sri Lanka in 2009. See the video here.

Facilitated Communication

FC is a supported typing technique used by people with autism and other disabilities who have absent or impaired speech. FC is defined by the Institute on Communication and Inclusion (ICI) at Syracuse University (formerly the FC Institute) as:

“A form of alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) in which people with disabilities and communication impairments express themselves by pointing (e.g. at pictures, letters, or objects) and, more commonly, by typing (e.g. in a keyboard). The method involves a communication partner who may provide emotional encouragement, communication supports (e.g., monitoring to make sure the person looks at the keyboard and checks for typographical errors) and a variety of physical supports, for example to slow and stabilize the person’s movement, to inhibit impulsive pointing, or to spur the person to initiate pointing; the facilitator should never move or lead the person.”

Support during FC can range from a facilitator’s hand on the FC user’s hand, to support on the FC user’s forearm, shoulder, or leg. The role of emotional support is also significant in FC, as is feedback by the facilitator, to let the FC user know the message is understood.

The goal of FC is for people to become independent or nearly independent in typing, with minimal support such as a hand on the shoulder, or for the FC user to develop an ability to speak some of the words as or after he or she types them.

FC is controversial because according to some studies, it is the facilitator and not the person with autism who is controlling movements and communicating. However, other studies have demonstrated authorship by FC users.  

Marilyn Chadwick, a Senior Consultant at the ICI and one of the country’s foremost experts on FC, says doubters should keep an open mind about FC.

“Skepticism is a healthy thing and often raises important questions about whatever is being observed. There are a number of people who have described themselves as initially skeptical of FC and now promote its practice,” says Chadwick.

“The key in healthy skepticism is an openness for the answer to be different from what you expect – that against all odds, what you are observing could be true. With that in mind, I would say to a skeptic, be open to the various kinds of evidence, because the answer may not be through the path of evidence that you are used to. Also do not deny a person a chance to communicate because you don’t understand or agree with what you are observing.”

FC is endorsed by autism advocacy organizations TASH (formerly known as the Association for Persons with Severe Disabilities) and the Autism National Committee.

However, because of the controversy, FC has not been widely adopted and it is not used in most schools.

“I think we do not fully know how much FC is used in this country. Because of the way it has developed, it has been hard to track,” Chadwick says. “But I would say that the number one reason people do not turn to FC more is that the intelligence of those who cannot speak and who have serious sensory-motor issues is still not recognized. We continue to judge them as limited and view their life outcome as bleak.”

FC has been a godsend for many people with autism who were formerly considered unintelligent, and even retarded, and later proved to be not only keenly aware of what is going on, but also smart, articulate, and eloquent in their communication. Many FC users have learned to type independently after first having physical support.

Candidates for FC include those who can understand language but have little or no functional speech and have problems in movement, motor, or sensory skills. Physical support is sometimes used to provide resistance on the arm to help control tremor or impulsivity, or to compensate for hand-eye coordination difficulties.

Chammi types on a Lightwriter, an electronic device that displays text and speaks the words as he types them. He also types on a laptop, an IPad, and a laminated letter board that is configured with letters in the same order of a standard keyboard, with additional phrases around the perimeter. A variety of additional assistive technology devices are available for supported typing.

On Being Mute

“Being mute is like having your brain gouged out,” Chammi says in “On Being Mute,“ an essay he wrote that is posted on the ICI website. “Autism/apraxia took away my voice, and a world that equates muteness with stupidity took everything else. Yes it really is as if my brain were gouged out. It hurts so much I want to scream.”

Chammi notes in the essay that we live in a world in which people who cannot speak are assumed to be unintelligent. At first glance, to many people, it doesn’t seem that a person who has little or no verbal ability would be intelligent and able to communicate effectively. Chammi and many other FC users have proven the opposite to be true.

Chammi’s intelligence is not in doubt. He has played a form of the game Boggle against this reporter approximately 50 times, winning more than two-thirds of them. The board, which changes for each game, has several columns and rows of letters, and the object is to create words in any direction by pointing at consecutive letters.

Breaking Free

Chammi’s family was told when he was a boy that there was no hope for him, and that he was profoundly retarded. It wasn’t until the age of 17 that he first learned to type with support.

In “Breaking Free from a Silent Abyss,” Smriti Daniel of the Sunday Times in Sri Lanka wrote about the moment Chammi’s family found out that he could communiciate:

“Another momentous event was the making of a video to send back home to the family. “Here’s your chance to talk to your family, say what you’ve always wanted to say,” Anoja (Chammi’s mother) told him. He did. His aunts, uncles and cousins, (gathered together in Sri Lanka to watch the video) watched in amazement as Chandima typed: “I want to say I love you.” Anoja wasn’t home when they called, but Chandima’s keen ears picked up the sound of the answering machine as it took the message in another room. Rushing to stand beside it, unable to pick up the phone and talk, he listened to his family’s outpouring of joy. “They were shouting and laughing and crying…that was such a wonderful tape. My brother’s voice could be heard the loudest, ‘cheers for the mother, cheers for the mother,’” remembers Anoja smiling.”

In 2003, Chammi and Anoja moved from Maryland to Syracuse so Chammi could become a more proficient FC user and trainer, and undergo speech therapy at the ICI. The ICI is the leading organization nationally in conducting research, training, and education on FC and AAC. The ICI also advocates for inclusive schooling and community living. While in Syracuse, Chammi also took courses at Le Moyne College.

Movement Problems

Despite the speech therapy, Chammi’s apraxia has prevented him from developing speech other than a few isolated words. Apraxia is a neurological and movement disorder that affects the ability to speak and execute motor skills. Still, Chammi practices oral motor exercises in the hope of someday speaking.

Adding to problems in speech, people with movement disorders may mistakenly be viewed as unable to comprehend requests, when in fact the desire to perform an action is there but the body will not always follow. Many people with autism are wrongly believed to have lower cognitive skills than they actually possess, but physical problems may prevent them from expressing their level of understanding.

“Helplessly I sit while Mom calls me to come,” Chammi said in “Inside the Autistic Mind,” a TimeMagazine article by Claudia Wallis in 2006. “I know what I must do, but often I can’t get up until she says, ‘Stand up,'” he writes. “[The] knack of knowing where my body is does not come easy for me. Interestingly I do not know if I am sitting or standing. I am not aware of my body unless it is touching something … Your hand on mine lets me know where my hand is. Jarring my legs by walking tells me I am alive.”

Many people with autism report feeling “stuck” within their bodies, and not able to feel their limbs in order to comply with requests. At some point there is a disconnect between the signals that originate in the brain and end in the hands, arms and legs.

EASE: Educate, Advocate, Support, Empower

In 2006, after more than 30 years in the U.S., Chammi and his parents moved to Sri Lanka to start the Educate, Advocate, Support, Empower (EASE) Foundation devoted to providing FC and AAC training for people with speech impairments. The Rajapatiranas started a small learning center that students with disabilities attend for free. Students are first taught to point to objects with the goal of eventually typing without physical support. Chammi’s mother Anoja modified the Sinhala alphabet to create a letter board to enable her students to communicate.

“We’re just trying to help people to make stimulating, productive lives for themselves, says Anoja.

Chammi adds, “By giving the children an alternative communication system, we help them interact with the world and we change not only their lives but the lives of the families as well.”

Chammi has given many presentations over the years to educate people about FC, typing answers to questions posed by the audience. Chammi still gets nervous and recognizes that his emotions go up and down. Chammi and Anoja met with a group of parents of new FC users in Bowie, Maryland, Thursday.

Chammi typed independently, breaking the ice by asking the attendees to introduce themselves. He later joked that his mother was such a good FC trainer because he trained her.

Excerpts from Chammi’s presentation at the 2010 FC Symposium in Whittier, California in July are below. (Sometimes Chammi refers to himself as “Guy.”)

“Guy hoping to change the way autism is viewed and experienced in the world, especially in Sri Lanka.

Tasting my great joy in my work heals my hurting heart in the end.

I and my brethren carried the twin messages of “assume competence” and “find a means of communication for people with impaired speech” all over the US.

I who was considered profoundly retarded became a college student ceased to be retarded! Believe it or not I was never retarded.

Drinking up intense FC training my Mom and I got ready for our next step; moving back to Sri Lanka to introduce FC to non-verbal people there.”

Other Success Stories

Here We Are World is a brief documentary from the ICI that features people from around the U.S. who type to communicate. The video was taken at the 2008 FC Symposium in Whittier.

Some formerly non-verbal children and adults with autism have even learned to speak the words as they type them after using FC. One of those people is Jamie Burke, a senior at Syracuse University.

Burke could not speak until he started using FC. Once he heard the words that his electronic device spoke after he typed them, he started speaking. In the documentary Inside the Edge: A Journey to Using Speech Through Typing, Burke says, “When I began my typing, seeing and hearing the words together helped me to begin to speak. Now that I am using my speech it feels like freedom from autism.”

Sue Rubin is another person with autism who learned to communicate through FC and eventually became skilled at typing independently. She earned a 3.98 G.P.A. in high school and attends Whittier College in California. Rubin was the writer and subject of the Academy Award nominated documentary Autism is a World, which appeared on CNN in 2005.

Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone

Burke and Rubin, with Richard Attfield, Larry Bissonnette, Lucy Blackman, Alberto Frugone, and Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay, co-wrote Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone with Douglas Biklen in 2005. Biklen is the dean of the School of Education at Syracuse University. The book describes first-hand accounts by and interviews with people with autism who communicate by typing.

Biklen writes, “In light of the controversy, this book includes individuals who can type without physical support or who can speak the words they type, before and as they type them and after they have typed them.”

Other quotes from the book include the following:

Sue Rubin: ”People stare and marvel at my irregular behaviors which lead to poor assumptions that I am simply mentally disabled with little or no intellectual functioning. My appearance is very deceptive, and day after day I am working, as an advocate for all autistic individuals, to let the world know that we are intelligent and witty, and should not be judged for our quirky behaviors because they are only a minute reflection of our true abilities.”

“Being looked upon as feebleminded is something I have been forced to endure my entire life. What an extremely difficult hole to have to climb out of, to fight for your own intelligence and capabilities.”

Tito Rajarshi Mukhopadhyay: “It was a terrible thing to hear from a doctor in Calcutta that I was mentally retarded. And thank God that mother did not believe it.”

“Yes, some areas remain less developed because of lack of associating the mind with body and environment. That does not prove that the mind is incapable of thinking…The proof of my retardation was that I could not follow basic commands. I was not able to apply my knowledge although I could understand perfectly well what was being asked.”

Alberto Frugone: “I hesitated on doing things because, not knowing their purpose, clumsy as I am, my actions ended up in the wrong way and I was afraid of being considered stupid…Today I would say I experience the same fear if I’m insecure when I type to communicate and I feel a lack of tolerance from the others who might mistake me for stupid.”

Richard Attfield: “An Educational Psychologist arrived at our home. He was a huge, insensitive man…he courageously announced I was severely mentally retarded…Angry with him, I took every book in the room and threw them in his direction. I do not think he took the hint that they were my books and I understood the words in them. Despite the efforts of my parents, I was denied entry into mainstream education on the grounds of my disability…As I see it, I was not given a fair chance.”

“When I failed at set tasks or refused to do them I was then damned as not having the ability. Some of the staff did not seem to comprehend that being unable to vocalize one’s thoughts is not the same as not having any.”

“That first day I typed it was a new beginning. No words can describe what it felt like to be able to converse with my mother.”

Jamie Burke: “I understand why kids scream. It’s frustrating not being able to speak and feeling as a mostly invisible being.”

Wretches and Jabberers

Bissonnette and another FC user, Tracy Thresher, star in an upcoming documentary, Wretches & Jabberers: And Stories from the Road, directed by Oscar winner and twice Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Gerardine Wurzburg, who also directed Autism is a World. Both Bisonnette and Thresher can speak the words that they type.

During their globetrotting tour, Bissonnette and Thresher visited Chammi in Sri Lanka, Naoki Higashida in Japan, and Antti Lappalainen and Henna Laulainen in Finland, who all communicate through typing (watch the movie trailer here).

“Being mute is a fate I would not wish on my enemies…being able to hold a conversation with another human is what makes life worth living,” says Chammi on www.easesrilanka.org.  

Chammi and many other people with autism have learned to type independently with no physical support, after first learning to type through FC. Chammi didn’t start typing until he was a teenager. Thresher learned to type in his 20s. Bissonnette started typing in his 30s. For large parts of their lives they were considered by the system to be retarded. Educators, therapists and support workers often talked about them instead of to them, a common mistake, and people treated them as if they couldn’t understand what was being said. Now they serve as examples of what people with little or no verbal skills can accomplish through FC.

Read in Full:  http://www.examiner.com/dc-in-national/facilitated-communication-fc-enables-non-verbal-people-on-autism-spectrum-to-communicate-by-typing