 Okay, welcome everybody. Thank you for taking some time this afternoon to join us for this program. My name is Dan I am the director of development and programming for the bed for playoffs. And I want to thank everyone for joining us today. This is the final program installment in our week long series of autism awareness week. We've had a lot of really great events this week and so I invite all of you who have not been able to participate for today. If you're interested to visit our YouTube channel. Bed for Playhouse and there are recordings or will soon be recordings for every one of the programs up. And I hope that you find it useful and informative as you, I'm sure you will for today's program. Just a couple of really quick things before we introduce our moderator. There is a Q&A button, which is at the bottom of your screen on your laptop or PC. You will find it at the top of your screen on your iPad or iPhone. Please use that feature to ask a question you can post a question at any point during the conversation and there will be some time at the end for for Q&A and the panelists will get to as many questions as we can. I should also mention that Bed for Playhouse is a 501 C3 nonprofit organization. We really rely greatly on the support of the community. And so we hope if you enjoy the program and you'd like us to see do more like them that you take a minute to visit our website, BedforPlayhouse.org and consider making a contribution of any amount. Everything is appreciated. And we really can't do it without the help of the public. So with that being said, I'd like to introduce our moderator Dana Pellaren. Dana is going to tell you a little bit about herself and then introduce the rest of our panel. And Dana, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thanks, Dan and the Bedford Playhouse for organizing this week-long celebration of autism pride. My name is Dana Pellerin and I'm the chair of Vocational Services at Cook School and Institute's Upper School where I develop and coordinate community internships for 120 students as well as design and teach a curriculum to prepare our upperclassmen for joining the workforce. I was a 22-year-old in college when I first learned about what many people call the cliff of services for young adults with disabilities. I became a research assistant for a project studying meaningful lives for adults with autism and other significant support needs. So I was transcribing audio recordings of parents describing the challenges of organizing and coordinating services for their sons and daughters just a few years older than me. This transition from high school to quote, the real life has become a passion of mine and I'm so excited to be here with you all and to join you in learning from the experience of our panelists today as we discuss autism and adulthood. I'd like to introduce our three panelists and then we'll hear from each of them about the work they are doing to support meaningful community engagement for young adults with autism. After that, we'll begin a Q&A session followed by an audience Q&A and as Dan said, the questions can be submitted at any time through the Q&A Zoom feature. So I'll welcome Patricia Wright on first. Patricia Wright is a senior vice president of Strategic Initiatives at NEXT for Autism. She supports strategic partnerships by networking, profiling and collaborating externally with organizations active in autism services, supports and research. Patricia's commitment to and advocacy for services and resources for the autism community has guided her work for over the past 30 years. NEXT for Autism creates and supports exceptional educational, clinical and vocational programs which address the needs of people with autism and their families across the country right now. Welcome, Patricia. We're gonna invite Tibi Guzman next. Tibi is the executive director and CEO of the ARC Westchester, the largest agency in Westchester County, New York supporting individuals with developmental disabilities, including those on the autism spectrum and their families. Ms. Guzman has been a part of the ARC's leadership team for more than 14 years overseeing different aspects of the organization. Ms. Guzman is the parent of an adult with autism and has two sons. The ARC Westchester provides innovative supports for children and adults with developmental disabilities and their families to build independence, achieve personal goals and strengthen community participation. Welcome, Tibi. And last, Frances Tobone, my colleague, PhD is the head of School for Cook School and Institute. He has been a teacher, psychologist and administrator for the Cook Schools and Department of Education in New York City, developing innovative programming for students with special needs. Dr. Tobone serves as an adjunct professor of special education at several colleges and universities. He's the author of the ASD Independence Workbook, Transition Skills for Teens and Young Adults with Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder, The Ultimate Teen Guide, It Happened to Me. Cook School and Institute is a K-21 independent school located in Manhattan that envisions a world in which all people with special needs are included as valued members of their communities leading independent and purposeful lives. Welcome, Frances. So we're gonna take a couple of minutes to hear from each of our panelists so that they can share their work with us before we move to our Q&A and we're gonna start with Patricia. Great. Thanks, Dana. And it's really exciting to be here with this kind of shared space with Frances and Tibi as well. Next for Autism, we believe in working in community and collaboration. So this is a great demonstration of how we value our shared work. So, Dana, you did a great job introducing Next for Autism. We're really interested in transforming the national landscape of services for adults living with autism. My personal perspective, and I think I share this probably with my fellow panelists, is autism is part of the human condition and that diversity really strengthens our society and our communities. And so I'm really excited to be talking about the needs of adults. For many years, the conversation has been focused on the needs of children with autism and certainly there's many unmet needs for children with autism, particularly we know disparity continues to exist across all age ranges. So we have communities of color, communities of poverty who continue to struggle to access services across the whole age range. But this conversation is starting to be advanced about the needs of adults. And I think one of the things that helped with that is the Centers for Disease Control did their first kind of prevalence understanding and estimated that 5.4 million adults are living with autism today in the United States. And that's a pretty giant number. And the prevalence data for children has been talked about for many years. And we also know that 50,000 individuals with autism are exiting high school every year and are in need of services and supports. And so Next for Autism is really focusing on those needs. And what promotes a high quality life. The areas we work in are employment. Everybody, you know, in our society, employment is one of the primary characteristics because I just, I kind of giggle about this, but you know, you go to a party when we used to go to parties. When you go to a party, people say, you know, what's your name? And the very next thing people say in North America is, and what do you do? And I wanna make sure people with autism can speak with pride about their areas of employment and Next for Autism works with corporations. We have mentorship programs to ensure people with autism have meaningful competitive employment and are working to their greatest ability. And then the other area, another area we work in is home, ensuring people have quality home and living environments. And we work very closely with our colleague and friend, the Ark Westchester and Tibby's team on that, really building quality service and supports parents worry about their children in adulthood, what's going to happen. And everybody wants to have a safe home. And then the other areas that Next for Autism focuses on are social lives and health and wellbeing. Health is kind of a base standard. We have to be healthy. So how do we support wellness, things like nutrition? We think about health a lot more right now in the current area of the pandemic. And we've always known health disparities existed, but boy has this pandemic raised awareness about the continued disparity. And Next for Autism wants to make sure that those issues are addressed for adults with autism. So we welcome the opportunity to be here and we thank you Dana for inviting us in the Bedford Playhouse, for inviting us to be part of the conversation. And we just want to ensure that we're promoting inclusivity in our society because that is the best way. If we can build equity and inclusion, then those disparities cease to exist and people with autism become part of that rich fabric of our community. So thank you and Next for Autism really appreciates being part of this conversation. Thanks so much. We're gonna hear from Tibi Guzman next from the ARC Westchester. Thank you Dana. I would like to share my screen now, if you don't mind bear with me. So I like to talk about our services. Let me know if you see anything, you do not. I'm sorry for the delay because I seem to have a problem here. Tibi, it's not a Zoom call if someone doesn't have a problem. So really, like thank you for taking one for the team here. Yeah, thank you. There seems to be a problem here. I can't see the screen where it says share anymore. I lost that. I'm sorry. So I'm gonna start talking here because I seem like I can't share the screen at all. My apologies. I'm trying to get back to you guys. I know you see me running my screen here but let me see if I can close this. I can't close this. Here we go. So at this point, I'm gonna share, I think I can share now that I see the screen. Excuse me a second. Do you see my screen? Yeah, there you go. We got your desktop. Wow, okay. Thank you for your patience everyone. Well, again, thank you Dana and thank you Bedford Playhouse for giving us this opportunity really to introduce our question to everyone. And especially this month, this is recognition of autism acceptance month which is really important to me as a parent of adult with autism and for everyone here listening and watching us that you can see from this photo. We support people with developmental disabilities from all ages from birth and throughout their lifetime. And we're very proud of that because we have expanded services. We've been around for a really long time, 70 plus years. And as the largest organization in Westchester County with over 800 employees that provide services to more than 2000 individuals, we are driven to continue to innovate and provide programs and services designed to foster independence. As we talked about earlier about employment and achieve personal goals and facilitate inclusion in community life. We take a lot of pride in that throughout all our programs our values of fostering independence and sharing safety, supporting good health, cultivating relationships and promoting happiness are embedded in the broad range of services we offer through our person's lifetime including today's focus of services for young adults with autism. Next, I would like to highlight some of the services we provide to the transitioning young adult. The ARC Westchester has strong ties with all our 40 plus school districts in Westchester. We built these relationships over many years and with our support, we are very pleased that more and more families are better prepared to navigate life after high school. We find that families are now familiar with the eligibility process like OPWDD, the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities. And if employment is in the students immediate future, as Patricia said, it's very important to everyone's life. Families understand that the importance of applying to access VR. Having said all that, the eligibility process can be daunting and it continues to be full of many steps. And unfortunately it has been taken longer due to the pandemic. When providing guidance to families, we are keenly aware that when you meet a person with autism, it's the old story, it's just like you just only met only one person with autism. We try to learn as much as possible about the unique interests of everyone we serve. That is why we collaborate with more than 50 organizations to provide engaging volunteer services and 250 businesses to provide internships and employment opportunities. We at the ARC Westchester grow with the people we support. The next service I wanna mention is our transition prep program. This is a great way high schoolers planning to graduate within one or two years can spend four summer weeks with us to practice skills learned in high school, explore interest, engaging conversation about past employment or meaningful activities after high school and work on goals in their individualized transition plan. Prefer success is our newest addition and actually just started this month to our transition services. This is a pilot funded by the TAP Foundation that was inspired by our observation of the delays in services last year due to the onset of the pandemic. We found the gap after graduation from high school and starting an adult program widen tremendously during the pandemic. To bridge this gap, we provided a curriculum-based program where participants can sign up for one, two or three months of classes. This is a hybrid model that allows for engagement on a virtual level and also in person. Reaching its first decade is our prize program, Project Search Autism Enhancement. As our most sought after program for young adults with autism, PSAE is a one-year internship experience targeted for the young adult with ASD, whose goal is competitive employment. The program takes place at the New York Presbyterian Hospital campus in White Plains, where our interns are immersed in the workplace environment and get to practice what they learn in a classroom setting and at a work site all in the same campus and all in the same day. These graduates that you see here have been able to acquire employable and marketable skills. We are proud to be able to facilitate employment from many of our graduates soon after graduation. Project Search was initiated by my colleagues, organization Patricia Wright, Next for Autism, in partnership with us, New York Presbyterian Hospital and New York Presbyterian Center for Autism and Developing Brain. PSAE is built on the Project Search program created by the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and it has grown from one original program site then to now 250 across 40 states and five countries. Autism Enhancement refers to the supplemental curriculum to the program developed as a collaboration again by Next for Autism. NEC North Carolina teach and Project Search to specifically address the needs of the individual with autism. So this sort of ends my little presentation about some of the services that we offer for the transitioning adult. So for more information about these and other programs we offer, please contact JC Furry. You see her contact information there, our transition director. Or feel free to visit our website at arcwestchester.org. If you have any questions for us, you are welcome to click on our contact button on our website and ask away. Thank you. Now the second responsibility I have is to stop sharing, right? Here I go. Thank you everyone. Thank you for your patience, by the way. Thank you so much, Tibi. And we'll invite Francis next to share his work. Thanks, Dana. And it is a pleasure to be here with everybody, big fan of ARC and Next for Autism. It's great to be here. I represent the Cook School and Institute. We are located in New York City, directly serving 300 students, 300 plus students, and several thousand across the city through our institute in which our consultants go into schools that are lacking in special education services and work with those teachers and staff to kind of help them bring their services to those kids. We are currently located. We run four distinct programs, a grammar school, kindergarten through eighth grade, an upper school, which is ninth through 12th grade, an 18 to 21 year old transitions program, and then our alumni program, which really serves students forever. We have students in their 30s who participate in all sorts of activities that we run there. Our population of students with special needs is about a third of our students are diagnosed with an IP classification of autism. But the truth is, we really do focus as a school program on broader characteristics. So we really do a good job of analyzing and assessing students' learning needs, their adaptive skills needs, their social-emotional functioning, sensory motor needs, and their communication needs. And these are the often can be the stumbling blocks for a successful entry into the community for our students. Our transition program is a program in which we really are proud of, and what we try to do is get the students ready for the next steps. So we really do spend three years with our students moving them and giving them experiences that will help them when they leave us develop those skills that they're going to need to live independently. Our focus, if you come to our school, if you visit our school, it really is a big push for this concept of independence. We want students making their own decisions. We want students making choices that are going to be with them for the rest of their lives. Our transition program is a community-based program. They're out in the community quite a bit. When you think about it contextually, there's an academic focus. There is the vocational focus. Our students go and work out in the community two days a week. As Dana would tell you in our vocational service chair, they go when they work on internships twice a week. And these range with a variety of jobs. We offered continued academic support in subject areas, community integration, opportunities developing vocational skills, and social-emotional supports there as well. After our students leave us, we do run an alumni program. We run classes in the day and in the evening. And those classes are to help support our students in the organization and agencies that they participate in after they leave us. So we do run some academic courses in the day and in the evening, social-emotional classes, group-related service classes, activities on the weekends to keep that community strong and vibrant as our students get older. I think the unique thing about the program is that in ninth grade, we start to think about this concept of transition, about moving on into the next phase of life. And so from a very early age, we're starting to develop students' plans, their vocational plans, where they're going to head after they leave school, and we build the support structures that they need to take with them when they leave us. We run parent workshops once a month to help parents understand the issues that are around transition, things like guardianship, supported decision-making options. We want to hold parents' hands through this process so that there are no surprises when the time comes for them to move into the next phase of their life. Our transition program also gives a lot of community opportunities for students to test the water, so to speak. So we do partner with St. John's University, where our students go and take classes once a week. We partner with agencies like Berklee Conservatory of Music, NYU, just to get them into the community to see what kind of options they want. As Dana was mentioning before, 22, a lot of our students, a lot of anybody, doesn't really know what they want to do. They don't know what the next step is. And so providing them some options and some tests helps make more informed choices when the day comes that they do move on to their next phase in life. That's our program. Like I said, we are right now serving about 300 students in New York City. We just built a new facilities to help house our K through 12 program. And our transitions program is ever expanding. We're up to about 80 students at this point. Look forward to a long future. Thanks so much, Frances. So we're going to move into our panel Q&A session. I've got four sets of questions here. If we have time, or we'll do three of them. I'll introduce a couple of questions within a topic. And panelists, you're welcome to pick out whichever part of that you want to focus on. And everyone can have a chance to answer each set of questions that I'll call on you so that we can follow in order here. So this first set of questions is about preparing school-age individuals with autism through each of your organizations. So our questions are, how is your organization preparing school-age individuals with autism with the skills for meaningful participation in their own communities? What programs or strategies are making a big impact on preparedness for community engagement right now? And what new initiatives would you like to see to further support the transition from school to adult life? And we'll start the set of questions with Patricia here. All right, so while I started my career as a transition teacher, so I love this population, 18 to 21 year old youth, that was my job out of high school. I was out of college, I was also 21. So I felt like it was a little bit of a day now I was really identified with you because some of my students were actually older than me and I was their teacher and it was just so, I remember thinking like, this is awkward, but I felt like I really identified with them because I felt like I needed support to transition too and I was supposed to be doing it. So that was pretty great. So, you know, Dean, I think that Francis, you spoke about this as well, like starting early. And I think, man, start really early. And I think about from a family perspective, so I am not a family member, I am only a professional. So I look at people like Tibi and others to help guide me in this work because I'm only a professional. And I think about how we help people have dreams and hopes and visions and high expectations. And sometimes that gets lost for people with disabilities because we're focused on their deficits. And, you know, Francis talked about this too, about opportunities to, what do you wanna do? Just having life experiences like, do you wanna live by the ocean or do you wanna live in the mountains? Do you wanna do, you know, do you wanna work somewhere where it's busy? Do you wanna work somewhere where it's quiet? And, you know, we all have to have those exposures and opportunities and those happen throughout life. And then the other thing that I would like to talk to, like my colleagues here in this audience about is, how do you prepare the individuals and I would like to talk about preparing the other 99%. So 1% of the people have autism and we talk a lot about what they need to do and how they need to arrange their worlds. But I think what we all need to do is how do you prepare the 99% to be more supportive and more understanding and accepting of, you know, neurodiversity. And so when I think about actions that we can all take, where we work, where we recreate, you know, are we checking in to make sure there's inclusivity practices? Is there an employee resource group where people are working that support neurodivergent employees? And so I think that's action that all of us can take in our daily lives is what are we doing to ensure that your faith communities, are your faith communities welcome to people with disabilities? Because what leads a kind of high quality life is opportunities to experience the community. And so, yes, focusing on the individuals with disabilities, but I think we'll have a much greater impact if we focus on the 99% as well. Thanks so much. Tibi, anything you wanna add to this about preparing school-age individuals with autism through our organizations? I think of Patricia's, you're right on target. I mean, there's just the key is not so much a person with autism, but it's everybody surrounding them that really should be better prepared to be accepting of a person with autism. And so I think that feel very strongly and that's again, talking from personal experience. If they had the confidence level, they had the exposure of more people with autism in their life, they wouldn't feel as a nervous or hesitant in engaging with a person with autism. And I think it's just exposure. I think our response and my responsibility as an organization, representing the our quest gesture is continually exposing everyone that we support out into the community as much as possible. And of course, the pandemic kind of put a halt on that a bit, but we're ready, we're set out, we're gonna continue our mission to ensure that everyone with autism is accepted and not feared and not shunned, not felt that they don't have talent. That's one of the things that I think is very important that I think as educators, both Francis and Dana, I would like you to look at is to make sure that their talent shines, overshines as much as possible because that is the initial point that the public sees and feels a comfort level with. Wow, this person is incredible at counting all the files that we have. This is great, nobody else can do that. So this is what we do all the time. We constantly, when we meet someone of new and that enters our organization, let's talk about your talent. Let's see, what are the things that you like? What are the things that you wanna share with everyone? And that creates also a comfort level with also the individual with autism, they feel that they're being accepted. Because while we may not see the old expressions that we're familiar with, with a neurotypical person, but you could see that they feel more accepted once there's a comfort level, once we reach that point of comfort. And I think that's also very important. Just a couple of things from experience again as working with these 250 businesses in the community, they look for somebody that the self-care hygiene, they go back to the basics, unfortunately, it's very important to them. And the fact that now everyone that graduates from high school in a special ed program really needs to know how to wear a mask. Because unfortunately, employers have mandated a lot of their businesses to wear a mask during work. And if that becomes a difficulty, then again, that it could be an obstacle for employment. Experience, as Frances mentioned, the more exposure you give them while they're young, the easier and the comfort level, the reduced anxiety it is when they enter a new environment and the adult world in employment. And this is one of my little small pet peeves is exercise. You'd be surprised how important exercise is for the young adult. And the reason why I mentioned is because if the upper body strength is a key piece with a lot of job opportunities, and it's not because they're constantly working in warehouses all the time, that's not the case. But just even opening an old fashioned file cabinet, the timing of all that, we found that if a person now, for instance, works in the mail room, they're not really dealing with mail anymore. They're dealing with packages. It's all about all the Amazon packages are coming through the company. So that now the mail room really has to push heavy carts all around. So these are the kinds of nuances that our team at the supportive employment department that we have, we have a nice, good team that really understands what employers are looking for and doing our assessment phase. We look at these areas and if we work on them early, it'll be a lot easier when you get out there and obtain employment as quickly as possible. Inet, can I add to that? I just really want to speak to what Tibi's saying as well. It's so interesting because people sometimes we think of job skills, like what do you want to be? And it's like, I want to be an animator. I want to be a baker, all those things. It's like, those are specific job skills. But man, those things that are often barriers are endurance, accepting feedback, hygiene. And I think about like probably most of us in this room, those of us, we've changed jobs a few times because I no longer work at Arby's. That's where I started my career. So I was also a newspaper delivery professional. And so we've changed all these jobs and my skill sets now. And like, but those core endurance, all those kind of component skills are ones. And I would love to hear kind of Francis how you guys, I mean, I don't want to call you out but kind of how you guys work on those because I think it's so true, Tibi. How does the organization prepare school age individuals with the skills for meaningful participation in the community? It's the most important question that starts in kindergarten. And I think that when you come to our program, what we tell parents is to be successful, it requires direct instruction in areas that you probably wouldn't think are gonna be typical. If you're a parent who really just thinks academics, academics, academics is gonna be the key to success. It might not work out that way. We do direct instruction in adaptive skills, life skills, Dana's an expert in the teaching of soft skills for a job, right? We've got to teach the soft skills to our students so that because most of them will get fired for showing up late, they need to know that they have to be taught, well, you have to call your boss when you're late, things like that. It's those soft skills that we spend an incredible amount of time on that make the student important. And I do think that that has the most, the biggest impact on their preparedness when they leave us. And I would argue that we have very strong relationships with job path and with AHRC and with other agencies that take our students who all comment that they're really well, our students are really well prepared for the workforce. And it comes from, if you're a parent, you really need to, right from the get go, ensure that your students are learning the adaptive skills, the life skills, the communication skills, the social emotions skills, they are equally as important as anything else that your child learns in school. So, it's a hard conversation sometimes with parents to say that AP calculus is not gonna be as important as independent living class. You've got to, you've just got to be accepting of that. And as a parent, I think, you know, what is meaningful and get participation in the community? We also need to prepare our students with making, helping them make that choice. Starting early, so our students can develop their support systems. They know to who to go to to ask for help. They know how to ask for help. They know which person in their life is going to be helping managing different areas. And then finally making sure we know what those students believe is meaningful. Not everybody wants to go to college. Not everybody wants to be, you know, a doctor or lawyer. People want to do different things and we have to have an open ear to be able to listen to our students to do that. And I think that's the biggest impact that we have that has in the community. The initiatives that we really need moving forward is more direct practice in these areas. You know, things like supported housing settlements so that our kids can start to get practice and living on their own and taking care of themselves independently when they get older. And that's a real difficult situation at this point is the housing part. But, you know, things are moving fast, so we'll see. Thanks so much. I'm jotting down things fiercely as you're all speaking just so much to take away from these ideas. But let's start talking about preparing families for this transition. So what are some important steps families of school age children can take to begin preparing for the transition? And what advice do you have for families caring for adults with autism who are looking to increase community engagement or independence? And this time let's start in the middle there with Tibbie. I'm not going around. Sure, I'd be happy to talk about this. One of the things that we do a night we have a lot of experience with is working with the local SEPTAs. You know, Westchester is divided into 40 plus separate school districts. So our staff has to go to every single school district and engage with them and talk about the importance of preparing for adulthood. So the SEPTAs in our situation here, Westchester is probably the best way for a family to connect and get the initial information, collect literature, do the initial contacts and find out what are the opportunities for their child as they move on to adulthood. So another thing I would, you know, I guess I would do very strongly is to engage with whatever career department, whatever department within the school system that offer these opportunities and the vocational pieces, the transition department to get that experience out there. That is key, as Francis said immediately as even before high school, to get that experience out in the community just the local pizza shop, just have them just fold pizza, you know, pizza boxes, whatever at a very early age to get their comfort level or, you know, get used to using their fine motor skills, you know, and moving forward on that experience and growing it throughout the years. And not to be shy, kids are resilient also, you know. And I was nervous too, having an adolescent going out and working, you know, in a local store, but at an age of 12 and 13, but it's just amazing how that opens up the opportunities and you learn about your own child in these experiences that you don't see at home. So I think it's so valuable to allow them to blossom by getting out there. Thank you. Let's go to Francis next. The boring answer is the paperwork that's involved, right? Making sure that you have all your paperwork done. And I have to say that it is really, it's essential that you get it already. It's essential things like guardianship or supported decision making, which is, you know, an option, Medicaid waivers. There's a lot of paperwork involved in, you know, helping to support a student with special needs. And in most cases, that paperwork will introduce you to fiscal intermediary or a Medicaid coordinator or someone who can really answer a lot of questions and be helpful in guiding you to the next, you know, phase of your child's life. I think that there are the nice, the advice I have, you know, in terms of community engagement or independence, there are an awful lot of new opportunities opening up every day. So I would say 10 years ago, there was, you know, a handful, now there's many. And, you know, Autism Speaks, ARC, next, all these organizations are resources that you can easily go online and look at, you know, opportunities and things that are out there. If you're in New York City, most of our families will go with AHRC, YAI, JobPath, and there's a few other, and within that universe, there are the opportunities, you know, are there, and they're plentiful at this point. But getting your paperwork in order really is important right off the get-go. You don't want to be stuck in a situation where, you know, you're not getting, you're not taking in full advantage of the financial and, you know, eventful opportunities that are offered to students. So make sure that gets done. Well said, Francis. I just want to add one point there. The age, the critical age is from 17 to 18 on that, a particular, what Francis is talking about. So if you get your evaluations, your psychologicals and all those pieces done towards the latter part of the 17-year-old and get that information, and by 18, you can apply for Social Security, you can apply for guardianship, you can apply for Medicaid. Thanks, so we can hear from Patricia next. Go ahead. Yeah, oh no, I, someone just chatted and said, you know, what paperwork besides medical, and I think this is really an interesting topic in Francis just saying getting the paperwork done is, I don't think the majority of our society understands that adults aren't entitled to services. You're entitled to services as a child, but you have to kind of qualify for services and access services after age 21. And I think that's another education opportunity for us in our society to talk about like, you know, we don't have entitlement services in adulthood for the most part in the United States for adults with developmental disabilities, autism and other. And so Francis, like you said, you have to qualify in complete your paperwork for what we're considered, you know, waiver services, Medicaid waiver services and other services that your family may have access to your individual family member may have access to. I also think that we talked about that work experience in high school. There's some pretty seminal research that says, if you leave high school with a paid job as a person with a disability, you are more likely to have a paid job through adulthood, really solid research about this. And so yes, internships are amazing, but internships doesn't have that same success rate. What has success is paid employment when you exit and you keep your paid employment. And that doesn't mean you stay at that job forever because again, I'm thinking the four of us change jobs, but it means that you had paid employment upon exiting high school, either upon graduation or when you age out at 21 and graduate, but that paid employment, so, you know, because the data are pretty dire about employment in adulthood and that's kind of been some ongoing research. So I think for families, it's like, when you're thinking about advocating within your individual education program, like I'd like my son to have a paid job, I'd like my daughter to have a paid experience, I'd like to, you know, thinking about what are we doing to help them get that opportunity, if that's what's gonna result in adult success? Let's see, checking on timing. I think we're gonna move to our fourth question, kind of skip through number three here and talk a little bit about disparities in access. This will be our last set before moving to an audience Q and A. So for marginalized populations, we know that issues of disparity and unequal access to services, education and care, these things are not new. But now in the spring of 2021, there are so many additional challenges that have been brought to the front of our country's consciousness as we live through this pandemic. The treatment of essential workers and immigrants, increased racial violence and systemic inequality affecting black and brown people, just to name a few things where we're all thinking about right now. And we're also here for Autism Awareness Month and we're hearing a growing demand from autistic people to celebrate April. As a month of autism pride and to center and amplify their voices. So let's put our work in this context. What issues of inequality do you believe still need to be addressed in order to best meet the needs of autistic adults and their families? How is your organization growing to meet these challenges and address issues of unequal access to adult services? And let's try and end this on something positive as well in the face of all of these challenges. What's giving you hope or making you excited for a more equitable world of community engagement for adults with autism? And I think this time we'll start with Francis. I'll start with something positive. I think what we've done at Cook is really, not personally, but what our founders did was pretty remarkable in that we are a needs blind school. So we are available to anybody who needs us in the city and we purposefully make sure our student body reflects the population of the city to the best that we can. So we are open to, it's really a very intense experience at Cook in terms of your related service, your clinical services, the educational experiences. And we make it available regardless of your economic situation, which gives us one of the most diverse student bodies I think in any of the schools that I know about especially in schools. So having that playing, and I think that part of the mission is really why, I know it's for me, it's the reason why a lot of our people work where they do. They wanna be part of that. They wanna be part of change in New York City. They want to be able to work with a diverse student body. I think that the difficulty when you talk about not just the students with autism, but people with special needs is this idea that even when they get a job and they work, they're not getting the same pay as somebody else who would get that job. And that doesn't seem reasonable to me. I think the laws and the regulations in the city are still backwards on these things. So not being able to make a certain amount or it's reprehensible. I mean, they should have this exact same opportunities to employment financially as others. And there are real restrictions on the opportunities that our adults can have, but self-directed funding does not pay for educational opportunities. So they are, I would say, segregated from certain opportunities that other people are not. And I think we have a long way to go with that. The other thing is, I don't wanna be too global, but our students are at greater risk in the community for being targeted by law enforcement or unfortunate situations. And we in the schools really need to make sure our students can take care of themselves in those situations that has to be a focus on education for our students, not just ours, but throughout the city. So. Thanks, Francis. I think that's Patricia next then. You're on mute, Patricia. Again, that has to happen at least once in every Zoom call. So thank you. Tibi, you took the shares, sweet sharing and I took the mute. So it's perfect. So Francis, thanks for talking about safety. I think that, especially with parents, I think that whether you have a child with special needs or a typically developing child, that's your first concern. And in many ways, it's us as well. It's a base level. We expect a base level of safety for in our society and helping people. And I think helping people understand people who have a unique presentation in our society and that it's not dangerous, it's just different. And how we kind of help raise that awareness is really valuable. On the equity issue, I think that Next for Autism has been committed. We are a pretty database organization. And just as Francis talked about too, it's like, how are we ensuring that the people that we're providing support to represent our population using kind of race and ethnicity poverty data to look at that and make sure that we're actually doing the right work. I think we all have some work to do in that area because we know people with needs are often able to access services more easily, people who speak English as a primary language. And so we definitely have opportunities for growth in that area as well as we continue to do work in diversifying our boards and our advisory boards and all of those things to ensure. And I think for me, and Dana, you alluded to this, the race autistic voices, right? For me, I don't identify as a person with autism. So I'm an ally. And when I work next to individuals within the community, I find it incredibly empowering and they keep me honest. And so I think for me, those raised voices, it's like, I have friends on the spectrum who when I move through the world with them and I watch their experiences, I'm like, oh, I get it. I get how this experience as we're having this drink together is different for you. I get how, and it's just been really valuable. And the World Health Organization states this as well. One of the most powerful ways that we can promote inclusion is by having friends and community members with disabilities right next to us. Like as people build those connectedness, that otherness starts to be more accepted. It doesn't, I don't wanna talk about like it goes away because differences are amazing, but that otherness becomes part of our vibrant community. And so I find it really exciting as people on the spectrum are kind of demanding of me a long-term service provider that I have to be better. I have to do better. And I find it really rewarding to meet those needs. Thank you so much. Tibi, do you wanna wrap up the section? Sure. I like to start on the opposite of Francis. I'm gonna start very negative and then hopefully at the end I'll end positive. I think both Francis and Patricia really pointed out many, many, I'm not gonna repeat them because they're all very, very important areas that we need to address. There's one that was not really mentioned yet. So I'm gonna mention it now, which is critical in Westchester, which is housing. Housing is really important. We have more than 300, I think it's more than 400 families waiting on a wait list to have their child place in an environment whether it's supportive or supervised. And there's just not, there are no placements. So now we're talking about, this is something for Francis as an educator. Now we're talking about people that are gonna live with their parents until they're 40, 50 years old. So how are we preparing that cohort? How are we preparing that group? Hopefully things will change. I said, I was gonna start pessimistic, right? So I'm gonna move a little positive. We've seen some movement for additional funding only through advocacy. And I cannot say it enough. The voice of family is so important to be heard for the individual with disability to be heard. To be heard, not just in the local communities, but to be heard by our state legislators, to be heard by Congress. And that is so key. They are now very strong disability organization on the state national level that are looking at this very carefully, addressing the inequities in employment, the minimum wage issue and all these kinds of things. But housing is also a huge gap here. And it is very concerning because now we have to make sure that people that are still living at home can still learn, continue to learn and be independent in a home environment where they had growing up with a lot. So these are interesting challenges that we'll be facing moving forward on the positive side, which I wanna end. I am really in awe in the investment of technology to help the individual with disabilities to become more independent, to communicate better, to remind them of all those things that they need to know at work, what time the break ends. We know all these important details. Technology is now our friend as an organization that support people with disabilities. We embrace it. We look at opportunities to teach opportunities to be an adaptive equipment portable now with a phone. You don't have to bring these huge, heavy, kind of communication systems that existed before. All of this is very, very fast. And we appreciate that and we embrace it and we're looking and looking and learning from it to make sure that individuals with autism and developmental disabilities are more and more independent as they grow. So that's my spiel there. Thanks so much. I'm gonna give a space if anyone wants to add a final thought here, but I just wanted to encourage anyone in the audience if you wanted to submit a Q&A because we'll be moving to that section next. You can submit that in the Q&A button in the Zoom feature. And then if there's any of the panelists wanna have a final thought that you wanted to make sure you got out there, I'll give you space for that. Can I take the happiness question that somebody asked? Yeah, so there's a researcher I follow, his name's Denny Reed and he measures happiness. And I just think that, you know, we spend a lot of time thinking about, like, I don't know, probably Francis, Tibi and I could talk about a million different ways to measure learning and how we assess where people are advancing. Dana, you too, right? Like, this is what we do. We create these goals and we measure them. And like, how much time do we spend measuring whether people are happy? You know, and how many times do it? Like, I think about back when I was a teacher, it's like, man, I wanted young adults who were like running into school. Like, they couldn't wait to be there. And I want someone who's really excited to be going to work and how do we help people develop those kind of internal gauges of happiness and what makes them happy. And Francis, going back to your experience about making sure people have a lot of varied experiences, it's like, the ocean makes me happy. Being at an ocean makes me happy. I know that about myself. The only way I learned that was having the opportunity to go to the ocean. You know, and otherwise I never would have known. And the same is true for people with autism, right? Like, does the Ferris wheel make you happy? Does that motion make you happy? Does, you know, really find work? Does writing code make you happy? There's a lot of things that make people happy. But that from a family perspective and from a youth perspective, it's like exposure. You know, I can share with you, roller skating does not make me happy. So, you know, but I went roller skating a bunch of times before I learned that. So, you know, it's like, bowling does not make me happy either. You know, but I got to go bowling to learn that. And then I got to stop bowling because I didn't like it. So, you know, I think that happiness thing and I think the person who posed that question, I really value that because why isn't that a primary goal for everyone? Why isn't the first goal? It's like experience greater happiness because I know that's a goal for my life as well. I just want to add, as I mentioned earlier, happiness is an important value that of ours that we saw my slide earlier. We felt it was key and it would just then come up with it. We surveyed our families and we asked them what are the most important values? And happiness was on the top five. And so we take it very seriously. We take happiness seriously. And we make sure that it's embedded in all our programming. We do direct instruction in leisure and leisure activities. How do you plan for a leisure activity? I think it's really important also, as I mentioned before just about that direct instruction is, you know, what is an interest and how can that interest be expanded? And, you know, let's make a list of things. I think it's, I wrote a book, activity workbook and a quarter of it was dedicated to leisure because our students, you know, a lot of times will not initiate, you know, an activity that they want to do or that makes them happy or they will not, you know, take those initial steps. And I think it's really important to work with your students, your children to develop like an interest inventory and then kind of, you know, model those steps that they'll need to, you know, fulfill it. It's as, again, as equally as important as any other subject in school. So we've got one more question in here. This is partly a comment here. It says, Cook gave great advice starting when my son was 14, beginning that early, they're talking about their paperwork here. Beginning that early gave me, gave time for me to procrastinate. It's an emotionally loaded process of procrastinations, understandable. And then still have all their ducks in the row by the time they were done with school. This parent says, keep in mind that paperwork goes to giant bureaucracies that can take a long time to process. Anyone like to comment on this experience? I well, since I had, I did, you know, went through it personally and also it hasn't changed. My son is 31 now. So, you know, we did this when he was 18. I was prepared. But then again, you know, as they say, I'm in the business. So I knew I was clearly educated early on what to do. And it is daunting. And I think you sort of have to be clear and be organized in making sure that the information is up to date. And it's not just a physical, a psychological evaluation and anything, any supporting documentation that will state the case for, you know, your child to enter into the system, if you will, the OPWD system, which is critical to provide all the services, you know, for a lifetime. And I think that's important. So families may hesitate. They say, well, I'm not sure. Let's wait a few years. Please don't wait. It just takes it too long. You need to do it as soon as possible. And that way, you know, your child can be ready as soon as graduation to enter into their next stage, whether it's a woman, whether it's a, you know, meaningful activity, whether it's, you know, education, continued education, all this is important to ensure that all the funding is available to support your child. Thank you, Tibby. And thank you to that parent for that comment there. Opening up, giving anyone space to ask any more questions. And if there's any other final thoughts from panelists too, we'll take that before we turn it back over to Dan. I just want to say I think I'm going to end on an optimistic note. Every day there are new opportunities and there are new agencies and there are new exciting things happening within this community. You know, stay, stay ahead of it and just get in touch with Next4Autism, get in touch with A, R, C, get in touch with AutismSpeaks and just keep, you know, keep your eyes open because there are really great opportunities and they're just getting better. Okay. And now, and I like to second that. Next4Autism is a very valuable partner with us. You know, we run, you know, in a large operation and the time to do the research, to define out, you know, what best practices are out there are, you know, are not always available. And, you know, I just thank Next4Autism for their ability to harness, you know, that information and share it with us and say, well, does this make sense in your environment? You know, if this happened in Hawaii, you know, can we do it here? Can we probably do it here? And, you know, you know, my answer always says, sure, you know, I love to, but, you know, it's not always possible but the whole point is that everything is changing. We know technology is moving very quickly but as well as opportunities. So, you know, I wanna thank that partnership, you know, and I wanna thank, you know, the education system that bring these young adults to us. I thank for all that what they did and ensured that they're as independent as possible so that we can take over and actually have them continue to grow and learn throughout their life. Thank you so much, Tibby. Patricia, before I turn it over to you, there was a question specifically for Francis. So I'll send this to him first. Francis, someone is asking, where does Cook see themselves in terms of programs after 21 in particular with alumni and self-direction? Right before the pandemic, we were expanding our opening, our coursework for alumni. So we were hoping we had done our first daytime programming for alumni, which was very exciting. We have one of the best people in the field really who coordinates and organizes this and she's an expert in the field of adult services. The pandemic hit and it shot our, you know, I mean, we're still doing remote courses but it really impeded our growth there but we are planning on adding more coursework, you know, hopefully to a five day a week kind of, you know, experiential, depending on the students. Thank you so much, Francis. And Patricia, let's hear from you some final thoughts to close us out. Yeah, again, I just wanna kind of echo Tibby and Francis like through collaboration, this works much better and through building community is how this all works, right? As people move through the school systems into adulthood, you know, Francis and Dana, you guys are building adult services because you know there's a need for additional supports. And I just think it's, you know, the action we need to take is all of us, right? Quality of life is important for everyone regardless of additional labels, right? Regardless of gender, regardless of disability or regardless of race and ethnicity as we want high quality lives and through each of our individual actions, whoever we are, this isn't just a social service issue, right? Social service builds services and supports. It's a societal issue and accepting of diversity and accepting of individuals who have unique presentations in our culture is seen as a value. And so I just, you know, kind of encourage all of us, what are the actions we can take in our own lives? Yes, those of us as our social service providers can build capacity, but really we all have to take action to ensure the value of our diverse framework including autistic adults. Thanks so much, Patricia. I wanna thank our panelists. I have a page full of notes here. This was so enjoyable to be a part of. I'm gonna be asking everyone of my juniors next year what makes them happy and what their talents are. So I'm excited for that. And thank you to Dan and the Bedford Playhouse for bringing us all together. And Dan, I'll let you close this out. Yeah, well, thank you, Dana, for doing a great job moderating this conversation. And thank you to everybody else. Just a quick reminder to everybody that we have recorded this and we'll be following up in the next couple of days with a link to the recording on our YouTube channel. So if there is a portion of it that you missed or that you wanna revisit, it'll be available to you. And please feel free to forward that information to anybody that you think might find it useful. And I'm also going to ask the panelists to provide us. I know people have been asking about email addresses and websites, anything you would like to share, they will forward and we will include that with the recording link. So there's some information coming your way in the next couple of days. Please look out for that. It'll come from our programming email. And that's pretty much it. Thanks, guys, this has been a great week. Again, as I said before, this was a really great way to cap it all off. And we really appreciate everybody taking it out in time out of their Saturday for this. Thanks, Dan. Thank you, Dan. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Thank you so much.