Colorado autism group reaches out to Latino community

From The AP:

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The Autism Society of Larimer County has started an initiative to reach more low-income and Latino families throughout the county, trying to educate disadvantaged families about the symptoms of autism and the resources available to help them get the treatment needed, said Phyllis Zimmerman, president of the Autism Society of Larimer County.

The society is translating posters, pamphlets and information about the organization and the disorder into Spanish with the help of Elba Willison, the society's new bilingual liaison. The society has also created an individual phone line specifically for Spanish-speakers, Willison said, and it is trying to find a space where it can have a monthly bilingual support group for families.

“There's a great need,” Willison said. “There are a lot of faces to autism and many barriers that make it hard for this group to get the help they need, from language and finances to cultural differences.”

The organization is also working to expand the service into Weld County, Zimmerman said.

“We would like to encapsulate it if we could get some support from the school system and other agencies,” Zimmerman said. “We are just starting to get the program going here, but we would definitely like to get it expanded into Weld. I have contacted the school district there to get numbers on the amount of children in the district affected, and I'm still waiting to get information from them.”

A study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2006 showed 1 in 110 children were detected with autism, a neurological disorder that can affect speech and social interaction skills.

That study also found the prevalence of affected Hispanic children with autism in Colorado increased 125 percent between 2002 and 2006. Zimmerman said she began recognizing a need for information about autism in the Latino communities after receiving an increasing number of calls from people with limited English skills.

“As those numbers started to increase, I wanted someone to be out there and be able to handle it,” said Zimmerman, who understands some Spanish but said she can't speak it beyond a basic conversational level.

The board sought out volunteers to become Spanish liaisons and found Willison, the bilingual mother of a 12-year-old boy with autism. Willison started fielding some calls from Spanish-speakers and is helping the Autism Society with the translations, Zimmerman said.

Social, learning and speech skills can often be early indicators of autism in children, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Zimmerman said she knows of children who have been misdiagnosed as autistic because they don't speak English well enough to understand instructions and choose not to interact with their English-speaking peers.

A study conducted by a psychology professor with the University of Pennsylvania's Health System, School of Medicine found that minority children are diagnosed two to five years later than their white counterparts. The average age at which children are detected is 41⁄2, according to the CDC.

Zimmerman said she thinks disadvantaged groups are detected later because they don't have the means for regular checkups. In the case of non-English-speaking children, language often plays a large role in the delay of detection because students will get labeled as English-language learners rather than having special needs, she said.

Willison said many of the initial efforts by the Autism Society will be focused in Loveland, which has a larger Latino population than Fort Collins.

Darcy McClure, community partnership administrator with the city of Loveland, said she's also heard of an increasing need to serve bilingual communities from the nonprofit organizations she works with. McClure said she has heard that agencies such as Loveland's Center for Adult Learning, which offers adult English classes, have started to see more families speaking limited English.

“They deal with many monolingual speakers, not just Spanish but a lot of Asian languages and Eastern European languages. They definitely know how language is a barrier to some folks in Loveland,” she said.

Both Willison and Zimmerman said an important goal for the Autism Society is to increase awareness about the disease and encourage parents to watch for warning signs while their children are still developing.

“We hope to be a beacon for people who might be in the darkness about this disorder,” Willison said.