One in 54 Utah kids has autism and one in four of them cannot speak. The Carmen B. Pingree Autism Center for Learning has launched a fund-raising campaign to help more children develop communication skills necessary for mainstream functioning.
Bloomua
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SALT LAKE CITY One in 54 Utah kids has autism the second highest prevalence in the nation and 1 in 4 cannot or will not speak.
"A lot of our kids cannot communicate basic wants or needs," said Julia Hood, director of the Carmen B. Pingree Autism Center of Learning, a specialty service of Valley Mental Health that serves children with autism across the Wasatch Front up to age 17.
"If they have a stomach ache or a headache, they can't tell you. Sometimes they'll act out behaviorally," she said, adding that some parents don't experience their child's first word until well into the elementary education years, which is a long time to go without knowing how that child feels.
Now the school that has a waiting list of 200 children hopes to increase its ability to help more children and soon provide an in-home treatment service where parents can learn how to provide help to their autistic children.
"They struggle to communicate and understand the nonverbal cues we use as a majority of our communication," Hood said, adding that she's been told, "it is so frustrating to not understand social norms and not be understood, but appear 'normal' (on the outside)."
Autism spectrum disorders affect a person's ability to effectively interact and communicate in social situations, and are also manifest through repetitive, restrictive and stereotyped behaviors and interests. The neurodevelopmental disorder presents differently in each child who is diagnosed, making the individual treatment that the Pingree Center offers imperative.
And the school hopes to make that crucial interventional education even more impactful by placing an iPad, equipped with various and specific learning applications, in each of its 160 students' hands.
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School for kids with autism helps inside and outside the classroom