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I’m the mother of a 12 year old boy; I was going to say little boy but he’s not so
little anymore. His name is Scott, Scott McAllen and he is significantly affected by his autism.
We have learned a lot about autism in the last 10 years.
We are one of the very fortunate ones to be on the support services waiver. And it really
was in a way kind of a fluke thing where right around the time of our diagnosis was the time
that they opened up several more supports or support services waiver slots. We just
happened to have good counsel at the time and someone said sign this, do this and I
did. I mean honestly, I really didn't even know what I was getting into and signing.
So the supports service has been a great help to our family. I know that there are, you
know, thoughts about changing that and about restricting that. I think what the Blueprint
brings is that, you know, even those of us who do have waiver services and have fairly
decent health insurance and all that, it’s never enough. I mean never is enough in terms
of coverage and services and even when you have coverage it's sometimes; it’s hard
to find providers. It's hard to find providers that will stay with the family for a long
time. So I like especially the part about thinking outside the box. I like the part
about networking and, you know, just being resourceful.
I have been in health care for 26 years. I've typically been in roles where I’ve helped
organization's move to change. What I like about the Blueprint is I think that's exactly
what is needed at this stage in the game. Not having been involved historically in past
efforts to, you know, very detailed degree. My experiences has been that many of our organizations
take kind of a defensive posture to, you know, helping us as families, you know, kind of
fighting back against things being cut or this or that. To me the Blueprint feels like
an offensive approach to things. Which I think is one, a much healthier approach
and two, I think is a much more constructive approach as we move forward. Just like in
health care, you know, gone are the days where we can do things the way we've always done
them. And so we have to think differently and with a different mindset, a different
paradigm if you will. Those are the same things that I'm experiencing in my professional life
right now and just helping our organization kind of rethink the way we deliver health
care. And I'm guessing in the disability community we have to do that exact same thing. It's
just a new day and resources are never going to be what they have been, just as the parents
get older with the baby boomer generation and all of those issues related to that. Autism
is, you know, about one percent of our total population now; one in hundred and ten children
are born on the autism spectrum. It's just a new day and I think it requires new thinking.
I’m a big one about synergy. So I love the stories about, you know, where you take three
different people and you sort of combine programs and you can basically do a much better job
for all three people at half the cost. There’s got to be a lot more opportunities like that
out there. There has to be, I mean that’s the whole idea of collaboration and synergy.
So I think if we can embrace those concepts, so it's not just our family giving up something
for somebody else's family; it’s maybe more of a shared approach. You know, pooling our
resources together that then we could be able to help more families.