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News › Advocates want more even distribution of state funds to help people with autism
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Finance: Advocates want more even distribution of state funds to help people with autism
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Posted by Sylvia on Friday, April 30, 2004 (14:51:49)
Sun-Sentinel 20/04/2004
By Jennifer Peltz
In a rural part of North Florida, the state is spending an average of $1,085 per client this year on advice and encouragement for autistic people and their families.
In South Florida, it's spending $340, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel analysis of state statistics. In Broward County, the average is $160 per client; in Palm Beach County, $308.
The difference is the outcome of a Tallahassee balancing act that often pits sheer numbers against scarcity.
For Florida Atlantic University's Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, the outcome is this: Two full-time staffers provide more than 500 autistic clients and their relatives with free help that's hard to label but that participants call invaluable. Support groups. Workshops. A professional advocate at a school meeting. An expert eye on a behavioral problem. A sympathetic ear for a distressed parent.
The autism center and some South Florida legislators are making progress to change that. Initially reluctant counterparts around the state now are backing the FAU program's bid for more support, as part of a push for more money for all of them. In what's seen as an important symbolic step, state budgeters have agreed to give money directly to the FAU group rather than considering it a satellite of the University of Miami's autism center.
FAU's autism center relies almost entirely on state money. It ultimately hopes for $750,000 a year, up from $157,000 now, according to lobbyist David Mann.
More money would mean more autism experts and a small corps of parents of autistic people working part time to help other parents, Director Jack Scott said. Broward County's autism center, at Nova Southeastern University, also is stretched thin. It has two full-time staffers to work with more than 1,000 families but often taps UM colleagues, according to Director Robin Parker. The NSU group has asked state legislators to raise its budget from $182,000 to $282,000 a year but isn't pursuing expansion on the same scale as FAU, Parker said.
Autism is a disorder that affects behavior, communication and social skills, usually by age 3. Estimates of its prevalence range as high as 1 in 250 births, according to the Autism Society of America.
Symptoms and their severity vary widely, but autistic people can be distant, volatile or both. Some never talk.
Scientists haven't pinpointed a cause or a cure, but medications, behavior coaching and specialized education can help.
The state's other autism centers raised eyebrows when FAU broached the idea of expansion two years ago. Some said it would increase the FAU program's administrative costs, draining some of the new money. And some took umbrage at the notion that South Florida wasn't getting its share. Together, the UM, NSU and FAU autism centers got nearly $992,000 this year, more than any other.
North Florida's autism programs may count fewer people, but they're farther apart, notes Paul Wharton, who runs a University of Florida-related autism center in Jacksonville. Staffers have to spread themselves out across the countryside, often to places that don't have as many other autism services as South Florida does, he said.
Just "getting parent groups together in rural Florida is a challenge," Wharton said.
Still, the other autism centers agreed in January to back a $128,000 boost for FAU, as part of asking state leaders for a total of $1.6 million more for all of them, according to a memo from the UM program's director, Peter Mundy.
"[Having a child with autism] is something nobody chooses," said one of the lawmakers championing FAU's plan, state Senate Democratic Leader Ron Klein of Delray Beach. "It's something the state should provide support for."
For more information on South Florida's Centers for Autism and Related Disabilities, see www.umcard.org or call 800-928-8476 .
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Posted by Sylvia on Friday, April 30, 2004 (14:51:49) (2393 reads)
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