35.2°F  Website Login | Royal OakAugust 19, 2009Berkley mother used personal experiences to start autism facility
By Jeremy Selweski
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Photo by Laurie Puscas |
ROYAL OAK — Stephanie Harlan has been director of the Judson Center’s Autism Connections program since its inception four years ago, but she believes it was fate, not career ambition, that led her down this road.
“I didn’t choose autism — it chose me,” said the 41-year-old Berkley resident. “Most people in this field have some sort of personal ties to autism.”
For Harlan, a licensed clinical social worker, those ties come via her 10-year-old son, Justin, who was diagnosed with the increasingly common disorder eight years ago. With few places to turn to help give Justin, then a toddler, the support services he needed, Harlan and a handful of other local parents formed the group Everyday Miracles, which began, humbly enough, by meeting in a Ferndale mother’s basement.
Since then, Everyday Miracles has expanded to become a nonprofit organization “designed to strengthen, financially assist and inform families and communities about children with autism,” according to its Web site. It now includes a network of hundreds of parents across southeast Michigan.
“We just kept growing to meet the needs of the community,” Harlan explained.
Judson Center joins in
Eventually, a board member from the Judson Center — a community resource center that has provided personalized support services to metro Detroiters since 1924 — decided that the facility should get on board with the increased demand for autism services and asked Harlan to head up their new program.
“They wanted to take more of a lead role in autism care because there wasn’t anything like that for people in this area,” she said. Around the same time, Harlan was greeted with more good news when doctors informed her that then-5-year-old Justin had fully recovered from autism.
“He is now considered indistinguishable from his peers,” she said. “That’s a big reason why I’m doing this — I want to make people realize that autism recovery is possible. With intensive early intervention, about 37 percent of these kids can recover. The only problem is that most people can’t afford the treatment.”
Yet, Harlan said, despite the fact that recent studies show that as many as one in 100 kids today are coping with some form of autism — compared to just one in 10,000 in the 1970s — a key problem that programs like Autism Connections have faced is a lack of financial support from the state and federal government. It is for this reason that Harlan has been working with Michigan lawmakers to help develop a new bill that would mandate health insurance to cover autism care and treatment.
“Autism is a childhood disorder that has spiked, but the grant funding has not kept up with it,” Harlan said. “I just think that it’s time these insurance companies started doing their part.”
With its recently opened 5,000-square-foot autism facility in Royal Oak, the Judson Center is trying to do its fair share, as well. The Autism Connections program’s new-and-improved home, Harlan noted, offers a much warmer and more welcoming environment than the “little, dingy, dark offices” where it used to operate.
The program currently has locations in Oakland, Macomb and Washtenaw counties, each of which offers a wide range of educational, therapeutic and support services designed to assist kids, teens and adults with autism, as well as their families. Autism Connections aims to promote independence and maximize potential for all individuals, from helping kids to better communicate with their peers to providing adults with the job skills necessary to transition to the working world.
‘All sorts of fun experiences’
On a recent weekday morning at the Judson Center in Royal Oak, kids at a day camp were playing games designed to develop social skills, while a teen group was holding an estate sale at a house on the facility’s property.
Drew LaNeve, 17, said he has had “all sorts of fun experiences” at the Judson Center this summer, including visiting a magic shop and meeting with colleges about his future in education. For 13-year-old Sam West, the highlight of the season was when he and the rest of his group visited Red Oaks Waterpark in Madison Heights.
Autism specialist Beth Kimmel said the primary goal at Autism Connections is to identify the roadblocks that each individual is facing, and then attempt to get past them in order to establish a pattern for success.
“Stephanie has created a really personalized, non-cookie-cutter mentality here,” she said. “I love working in a place that focuses on people’s abilities rather than their deficits. … There are lots of people (with autism) who want to live independently but are lacking certain skills. We try to show them that it’s not unattainable — it’s just a matter of looking at, ‘What supports do you need to be successful?’”
The Judson Center’s expanded autism wing, which emphasizes bright colors, open space and natural light, is a major boost in helping its clients get there a little quicker, according to autism specialist Lindsey Fisch.
“It has definitely enhanced the quality of our program,” she said. “I like having all these distinct areas where kids can still be part of a group but not feel like they’re being isolated from the group. … These are just kids who sometimes don’t know how to channel their energy or express their feelings in a controlled way, so sometimes they need that extra support to adapt to the real world.”
One of the lessons the program emphasizes to kids is that autism is nothing to be ashamed of. Harlan noted that Justin, who will be entering fifth-grade at Berkley’s Pattengill Elementary School in the fall, has internalized that message as well as anyone.
“He’s the first one to tell people about his autism,” she said. “He’s become a really big advocate himself.”
The Judson Center’s Autism Connections program will host an open house and family fun day from 1 to 4 p.m. on Aug. 23 at its Royal Oak facility, located at 4410 W. 13 Mile Road. For more information, call (248) 837-2047 or visit www.judsoncenter.org.
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