[Music] hello and welcome to your South Florida i'm Pam Jaganti april is Autism Acceptance Month a time to recognize and support people on the autism spectrum and the numbers are startling today one in 36 children in the United States is diagnosed with autism and as they grow up most families face challenges especially when it comes to employment and independent living according to the Autism Society of America an estimated 85% of autistic adults are either unemployed or undermployed often due to a lack of opportunities workplace support and understanding yet research shows that individuals on the spectrum can be exceptional employees they're highly dedicated detail oriented and hardworking when given a chance and placed in the right environment that's why we're here at the Demoa Foundation a familyrun nonprofit dedicated to helping young adults with autism and other special abilities find meaningful careers they're equipping them with the tools to thrive while also showing businesses the benefits of employing a neurodeiverse workforce this is so beautiful it is yeah and then Oh and this is be you yeah be you i came up with I came up with a be you one you did and then Yeah you're so creative i love it something in the front not blank not blank no i think that's smart this is so lovely and it's soft too it's very nice you're going to sell a lot of these i think the De Mo Foundation is a nonprofit organization started about 8 to nine years ago uh dedicated to creating employment opportunities for young adults with unique abilities uh we partner with a variety of industries and companies in Miami Dade Broward uh also now in Monroe and hopefully in the future Hillsboro County and it all started because of my mom and my brother it has been a lot of fun you know um growing up with him it's been very adventurous it's been very humbling but can be um struggling at times but it was also kind of the I'm supposed to be here situation i was built for that can you talk a little bit about what some of those challenges were maybe some of those unique situations that you had to deal with growing up but also what you saw your parents going through we didn't view them as as obstacles uh you know we view them as just a journey my mom um was an ultimate advocate from day one and she actually had her bachelor's in chemistry and was an RN she still has her nursing license and as she discovered things that were going on with with my brother she went back to school and got her masters in special education uh from the University of Miami she then dove in into the education system and was making sure that he was going to be included in the world and all of our entire family said "All right this is this is how we push the needle forward."

This is our mindset and this is our mindset there there are no ceilings um we expect more right not just from ourselves but from him because when a high-end doctors tell you your son is going to need roundthe-clock care she said "No absolutely not we're going to do everything possible to make sure that he is as independent as possible."

And look where he's come oh absolutely it It's leaps and bounds um there are everyday obstacles of course but compared to what we were told it's night and day it's a complete 180 this is your shop yeah my shop this is your office this is your shopping my office my shop my desk i do I do email i write um I send I send welcome there to new people who join the financing for them to hop on some classes we have on Google meets i teach one it's our sport club tomorrow absolutely there is a timeline of education and care for these young people and they get to a certain point and then it's like okay you're on your own after 22 unfortunately these services just fall off uh and that's where the De Mo Foundation really pick comes into play because we're there right after that you can go to vocational rehab you can open a case with the demo foundation and we can start the process of looking at the outcomes for employment we have a very detailed model and a very detailed process that helps not just finding employment but also the independent living skills that surround employment after vocational rehab does their outcomes then we go into pre-employment training that pre-employment training is conducted by our mental health counselor that is on staff Kidad that really helps them figure out what they want to do and what they're good at and really assess those unique abilities so it's not just placement it's career exploration it's careerdriven when a young person comes in and they're starting what are what's the training that you provide for them i provide sessions to the participants of our program um if they're feeling depressed or anxious experiencing grief um they typically meet with me so our pre-employment training is going to consist of anything really that has to do with the workplace right so we're talking about resume building interview skills workplace etiquette conflict resolution transportation stress management internet safety do 20 hours with me and then they do 20 hours with the job coach the job coach is going to teach the participant in a way that the participant is going to understand um and and also I think put in place accommodations that really help them do their job right those accommodations can be things like visuals checklists reminders task analysis they are an integral part of this process correct and and and they never stop so let's say that an employee has been working for a year they're completely independent um and so the employer says "Well we want to take this person to full-time um and we want to teach them as additional task."

We then go in again we learn those tasks and then we teach it to the young adult the job coach is not only providing support to the young adult but also to the staff how do I go about you know speaking to this person about this topic or this issue can you help me um manage this situation talk about your employer partners how many of them do you have and are you trying to grow that base of partnerships we have over 80 uh in Miami Dade uh Broward um and a couple in Monroe County and getting employer partners is one of our biggest challenges and we have phenomenal employer partners um from Baptist that hired 29 young adults um all the way to Summit Aerospace which uh has five young adults all these employer partners they bought in and when you buy in to the program and you see the amount of support that we do give them you'll see that it it's a win-win in the end uh but it's not just placing young adults anywhere we need more and more businesses willing to open the door to bringing in a uh individual who has a unique ability because they want to do something special they want to do something that they love and when we find the right match that will yield long-term success um the Oliver Patch Project is a program um for pediatric cancer uh kids that are in um that are currently going through treatment we make jackets and totes and send them patches every month of support um just letting them know that belong to a community and they're not alone hector is magic hector is one of the most amazing individuals that you could ever imagine you know not only is he efficient and effective and specific he's one of the most amazing talented artists that we've ever met hector's like super important because he does the things that you know we do a lot of patches and cards every month so from what people might view as mundane tasks to really creating designs that we've then taken and had made into animations and made into patches he's working all these sticker designs he's so precise in what he does like I don't really have to worry about checking him like I've double checked his stuff too and it's just fantastic like out of everybody I've ever worked with I'm very happy to have him on my side because he's like my sidekick and what we started introducing was using his creative talent we're like you know kind of bringing in something more that is aligned to what he likes and what his talent what he's really good at so he's been drawing our characters in like his style lately and it's gorgeous and he gets so excited like you can feel the energy come off of him when he's like "Let me show you what I just did i just finished this one."

And it's just it's brightened our days every day Hector walks in it's like a breath of fresh air for us and kind of puts things in perspective yeah they're uniquely individual and amazing but that's what makes them who they are and kind of what adds to what we do here at Oliver Patch Project for sure talk about your designs right now I'm redesigning the characters that they already have here in Oliver Patch which is original to them and uh in in my spare time I like designing characters for my own animation studio uh which I'm planning on opening for the future called Hector Studios how does creating make you feel it makes me feel like I could uh I could uh do big things in the future and uh I feel kind of special in a way mhm well because your designs are they are special it's like it's a part of you uh to me my original characters are like are like my children that's wonderful and then all the work that you're doing and working for the Oliver uh patch project do you feel that it's given you a lot of independence that you can kind of do anything you set your mind to how many um young people who are on the spectrum or neurode divergent have you placed in employment we have placed uh over 80 young adults on the spectrum within employment that are working 20 to 40 hours a week wow uh some over five years of employment at the same business wow which is unheard of and that's just within the ASD community wow you know so we um have lots of young adults also on the waiting list we have about 80 on the waiting list and within Miami Dade County so we are looking for employer partners you know desperately i got you so they're on the waiting list for employment yes yeah are they already trained or you haven't even started that process oh they are trained oh so they're ready to go they're ready to go talk about the family support and having the parents really buy in to this idea of allowing your child to be this independent person that maybe they had been told they couldn't be we love all of our parents that get involved uh but it's hard to let go we tell parents "We're not asking you to do something that we as a family haven't already done because you've lived it right we lived it i've been job coaching for 30 years since the day Alice was born."

Yeah exactly by letting go you give you take a leap of faith you know and you hope that everything's going to work out and sometimes it doesn't along the way but in the end it will when they are joining the Demoa Foundation they're joining the Demoa family and they're not just supported by the job coaches they're supported by our parent liaison they're supported by our mental health counselors on staff they're supported you know by their peers and they can participate in classes they can participate in events um so they get to rely on a full-fledged community of members and they will always have the support of our program ambassador Alex and my brother that is their biggest support and you know he's here for that he's here for them what can the rest of us learn from people who have ASD or who are neurode divergent I would say the the best thing that you can learn is uh a little bit of patience goes a long way and also to expect the unexpected don't expect it to go wrong don't expect it to not go the way you think expect it to go further than you think and you'll be surprised while employment and independence are critical issues for people on the autism spectrum another serious concern for families is water safety drowning remains the leading cause of death among children on the spectrum according to the Autism Society of Florida children with autism are 160 times more likely to have a near drowning experience or to die from drowning than their neurotypical peers factors such as wandering and sensory seeking behaviors put them at greater risk that's why water safety education is vital the International Swimming Hall of Fame is addressing this issue through its every child a swimmer initiative which helps kids including those with autism learn how to swim and to develop critical water safety [Music] skills drowning is the number one cause of death for children 1 to four it's the number two cause of death for children 5 to 14 it's completely preventable the state of Florida continues to be one of the highest states if not the number one state in the country for drownings and the reason why is we're surrounded with water everywhere you look there's a body of water whether it's the ocean the Everglades the thousands of pools that we have in our backyard but also uh it only takes 2 in of water for a drowning to occur and so even a swale or a koi pond that may be nearby could be a drowning hazard i feel like the biggest hurdle to address or educate the community about drowning is that people don't think it'll happen to them i think they see it on the news and they just assume that it happens to those type of parents or those type of people or this demographic but it would never happen to me it's been 15 and 1/2 years since I've lost my daughter and I've been trying to answer that question from day one you know where where are we missing it what's happening and time and time again you know I've heard people say that "Oh my gosh it's a summer issue problem."

Like it's a summer problem or it could be those parent those parents should be charged where were they how dare they what I've always tried to encourage parents to do is think that it can happen to me just like having a flat tire now what am I going to do to prevent that from happening nobody wants this to happen to their child you know nobody the guilt that riddles any parent that this happens to is is overwhelming you know and you could allow it to eat you alive and and and bury this story and bury what happened to your child or you could fight to have a voice when you think about the autism component and drowning it's one that we need to bring to the surface more because the diagnosis of autism doesn't even happen until they're probably in preschool if not early elementary in most cases and yet drowning is the number one cause of death for children 1 to four children with autism are 160 times more likely to drown and a huge reason for that is because they also have a very high propensity for wandering and in fact 91% of children with autism who die from drowning do so as a result of getting out of the home undetected they're very self-directed that means that they tend to not really think that they need to talk to mom and dad say "Oh I'm going to go outside."

Um when they have an interest which water is a very high interest just tend to go and want to check it out and if there's no alarms on doors there's no specialized locks on doors and it's easily accessible they're going to go for the water um that's why we also have a very high level of children with autism who will drown in a lake retention pond canal uh at a much higher level than we see kids who don't have autism last year out of the uh 18 to 20 kids that we lost in this state to uh lakes retention ponds 16 of those kids were kids with autism those are also the kids that are not showing up to swim lessons either the swim school has told the parent "We agree with you your child needs swim lessons but we're not the school we don't have what you need we cannot provide the one-on-one or they don't have patience for the child they're not going to learn at the same speed as other kids and they also have a very hard time generalizing skills which means they may know how to swim over here but then they'll go into another body of water and not know how to swim and we've lost kids that way because we have such a high rate of drowning here autism Society of Florida we we do work inside state but we also train even outside of the state we train water safety instructors on how to teach our kids helping them understand a little bit more about how that kid with autism may show up to your swim school and make a beline for the water and just jump in there's something called social stories and we have those free on our website and there's a social story about swim school so that we can prepare the kids before they get there we have families that will share with us swim schools that they've used that have just been really great for our kids it tends to be a little bit more expensive when they get into lessons because they either have to have private or semi-private swim lessons and most parents can't afford that when they're all in all of these other different things to be able to help their children thrive and just do basic skills the International Swimming Hall of Fame is the parent company of Every Child Program we advocate for legislation throughout the country just like fire safety is talked about in the month of October in every school throughout the entire country our goal is to have every child swimmer or legislation be talked about the same way we all know stop drop and roll you know because it's ingrained in our brain at such an early age but nobody talks about water safety and yet it continues to be the number one cause of death for children in 2020 we passed legislation Dr bill Kent um did who was the chairman of the board of international swimming hall of fame u passed legislation in the state of Florida requiring all schools to share water safety information with the parents and caregivers we also provide learn to swim scholarships to families that cannot afford it so a family that makes below $50,000 a year qualifies for every child swimmer scholarship and they get up to 3 months of swim lessons and each scholarship recipient we guarantee that they're able to have the means to get out of the pool unassisted we're really lucky in that we have um you know we have water smart Florida we have uh Broward County has amazing uh water drowning prevention programs and some a program called swim central the state also last year the governor gave uh $500,000 to a swim voucher which was great but $500,000 is not enough to make sure that every child in Florida knows how to swim so we're constantly seeking additional funds through that swim voucher the local vouchers and just making sure that every child has access to swim lessons nobody can watch their children 24/7 that's why one layer of protection is never enough we have to have the alarms on the doors fencing around the pools supervision and if your pediatrician doesn't bring it up I want you to bring it up i want you to say to your pediatrician "What do you know about drowning prevention?"

And if they have a child with autism do you understand the connection of drowning and wandering because that in itself is enormous not only for the autism community but for all children this is serious we lost 105 children in our state alone last year and that does not touch the non-fatals we have to do more you know and it's going to take all of us for that message to be heard by all parents and caregivers for many on the autism spectrum self-expression and communication can be a challenge but that's where the arts can be a powerful way for them to share their voices that's the mission behind the Autism Theater Project a South Florida based initiative that creates inclusive spaces where neurode divergent actors can develop their talents build confidence and connect with audiences in a meaningful way their latest project The Voice Inside gives a unique window into the experiences of young adults with autism told through their own performances we spoke with the founder of the Autism Theater Project and the talented actors behind The Voice Inside to learn how acting is not only empowering performers on the spectrum but also challenging perceptions and fostering greater understanding as well the Autism Theater Project gives a voice to people with autism and related disabilities and in a way it's unlocking the stories that they have to tell and the the gifts that they have to contribute to the world that might not seem easily accessible at first the arts gives people a space to explore their imagination and explore different aspects of their capability in a place that can actually be very welcoming which is a um a theater setting uh for people on the spectrum it can be very useful and specifically because I've heard that certain people from the spectrum benefit from scripting which is basically when they're given a script for a conversation and how to start one and when it comes to theater and film they're given a literal script and within that script they in a way can express themselves more freely the Autism Theater Project was initially inspired by my little sister who's on the spectrum she has a very beautiful perspective on life but because she's limited verbally unless you're spending a lot of time with her there's only so much she can tell the world the Voice Inside series first came to mind during the pandemic and it was inspired by both a victory and a tragedy uh the victory was that during the pandemic because the schools were closed ended up homeschooling my sister and I saw her breaking through certain obstacles and then unfortunately a past student in one of my drama workshops was uh murdered both of those events made me feel like you know autism is has become this very big part of my life and I feel like I want to do something in response to especially to the tragedy so I thought you know let me create a production that focus more focuses more so on autistic teenagers and young adults finding success despite their obstacles i started seeking real stories as inspiration and that's how I ended up meeting the writers and some people on our administrative team as well who are on the spectrum who have these amazing stories and together we started creating this series i can't do anything because of you being that these stories are all based in truth and based in real people working with the actors and working with everyone we get to infuse the actors viewpoints and how they tell stories and how they describe things or talk or say jokes we create people that are real and instead it's not audience and actor it's just a moving storyline that people can feel that they're a part of and feel that they can connect to and really attach themselves to the best part of working on The Voice Inside has mainly been seeing the people involved surprise themselves especially the actors seeing them build their confidence because they're in a very vulnerable position at times telling their own stories and even when they're playing a character that was inspired by someone else they're portraying aspects of what it's like to be on the spectrum that are very vulnerable like having a meltdown feeling underestimated when there really is just a misunderstanding between them and a parent or a teacher i play the main lead who has autism who has spent seven years in high school in special ed he is told that uh he won't be getting a uh a high school diploma and uh will be getting a a certificate so he signs up for uh the uh the GED uh in order to get a uh into college i play Lily Taylor and I play an adult education teacher it's a little bit different from my world as being an elementary school teacher so I had to come in with a little more punch and oomph for the script i was kind of nervous cuz I'm not autistic and I didn't know if I was going to be playing an autistic character my character's name is Brad he interacts with the main character and I thought at first this character might be a bully he might be pushing he might be the antagonist but looking deeply into like what they've written what's being built I understand that like it's it's a mirror to ourselves when we're encountering things that we don't necessarily understand no they don't and you know I like acting because it's fun it makes me feel uh energetic expressive emotional and proud of myself uh and uh and the the work I do as an actor one of the best things one of the reason I do it in the first place is to put my feet in the shoes of another person i didn't understand what the challenges were with autistic people's in education and I'm like these things that I felt were simple that I struggled with when I when I was a child they're not even given the chance to struggle to overcome them as adults because of how people perceive their capabilities to be i'm not just doing this for me i'm doing this for people that have been told that they have to limit the selves people that have been told they'll never amount to anything it's about making sure that little girl or that little boy or my students that even that I teach make sure they have a chance to know that you can dream big and you can achieve the goals that you set for yourself in life even though uh some people uh tell them that they can't do it uh if they want to uh get into acting they should just uh do it anyway seeing the impact of the work itself on the audience members has been the most rewarding for the team we've had audience members who are on the spectrum come up to our actors on the spectrum and they they've become these stars for them and we've seen parents come up to them uh to our actors expressing how the series helped reinforce their faith in their children who have been newly diagnosed with autism it all feels that it has a purpose and it has a meaning for the people that it's affecting i believe the success of the voice inside will make a huge impact on how people see the power of true collaboration amongst artists with and without autism because everything from the script to the the actors doing their scenes to in some ways the cinematography it all came from this very strong collaboration and I hope that as the show succeeds people will turn to us and and in a way find inspiration from how we address the strengths and weaknesses of everyone on our team whether or not they're neurodeiverse and how we really get the best out of everyone i'm Pam Jaganti as always thanks for watching for more about our South Florida community like subscribe and click the video below