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Moving Forward with Will Power
My name is Will Peters, I am a recent graduate of AHRC New York City’s Melissa Riggio Higher Education Program (MRHEP) at the College of Staten Island. The College of Staten Island is one of the colleges of the City University of New York, which provides students with intellectual and other...
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The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation Adds 5th Adult Autism Endowment Fund Assuring a Focus on Adult Autism Public Policy for Generations to Come
The collaborative vision of The Daniel Jordan Fiddle Foundation (DJFF), the nation’s first not-for-profit organization to exclusively focus on adult autism, has been further enhanced by the establishment of a new endowment fund at Arizona State University, adding to DJFF’s existing endowed fund...
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NY State Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara’s Personal Mission of Advocacy on Behalf of New Yorkers with Disabilities
Life is almost never a straight path. If you try to make a plan, you will sometimes head in a direction you never could have imagined. For me, the journey has not been simple, and it is has not always gone as I expected. My parents are both Italian immigrants. They left their homes in...
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Autism Saved My Life
For 36 of my 40 years, I was disabled. I was cut off from the world but for the tiny bubble that was my bedroom. Barely able to care for myself, angry, scared and lonely, I felt hopeless and broken. Suicidal thoughts were a daily reminder of my inadequacies and failures. I was certain there had...
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Supporting Students on the Autism Spectrum: Many Things Need to Change
It has been a long time since I was a student. In fact, it would be many years before most people would even have heard the word autism, and decades before I was finally diagnosed on the spectrum. As such, I never received any supports or accommodations. Fortunately, I managed to succeed...
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A Parent’s Plea for Reform of School Safety and Mental Health Programming
With an estimated 17.1 million children and adolescents presenting with or having received treatment for a psychiatric disorder including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder (ADHD), and Anxiety, school systems across the nation are being thrust into the front...
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On Being a “Unicorn”
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -Benjamin Franklin Usually writing comes easily to me. It’s one of the unexplainable gifts that comes with my autistic brain. I fully expected that I would sit down in front of the screen, access my...
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Women at Work
When I founded Yes She Can in November 2013 I created the motto: Women with Autism. We work. With you. It was my vision that with proper training and support, women with autism could and should join the competitive workforce and work side by side with neuro-typical peers, whether it were shelving...
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The Dilemma of Aging Parents with Adults with Autism Still Living at Home
In a summary of key findings from the 2015 National Autism Indicators Report, we aging parents now have confirmation: “Young adults with autism had the lowest rate of independent living (19%) compared to their peers with other disabilities.”1 The 2015 State of the State in Developmental...
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Adults and Autism: Insights and Changes from a Clinical Perspective
It has been six years since I first wrote on the topic of evidence-based behavioral health treatment for adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). I would like to revisit this subject to address progress in the field. Without substantive data to help guide behavioral and therapeutic...
