Every month, we diagnose about seven more Madigan Army Medical Center kids with autism. That's seven more kids who will soon start therapy, and seven more families whose lives are transformed as they learn more about the disorder, scramble to connect with resources both on base and in the community, and find out how best to support their kids' social and language challenges. No matter how you look at it, this is a very difficult challenge for military families. Our team at Madigan understands. We've been working hard to find ways to help our special needs kids and are proud to announce that we've secured the funding and authorities to open the Department of Defense's first autism service center in early 2017, the Joint Base Lewis-McChord CARES Center.
Autism is a neurological processing disorder that impacts people's ability and desire to communicate, and can impact other areas like motor skills and executive functioning skills such as planning, organizing, and sustaining attention.
To make sure we use the best therapies to address these needs, we toured the country and visited renowned autism treatment centers to ensure that we include their best practices in our program. The JBLM CARES Center services will include occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy, as well as the leading behavioral therapy for autism patients, applied behavioral analysis. ABA teaches positive social behavior to patients to allow them greater independence and quality of life. In addition, we'll offer group therapy focused on social skills, which is a unique therapy in this area.
Thanks to our partnership with Armed Forces Community Service, we will be able to provide wraparound services for our autism families to include a community resource room at the center, system navigators, parent education and support groups, and an on-site respite care coordinator for parents. Since Joint Base Lewis-McChord is a hub for all exceptional family members, not just those with autism, our center will allow these families to use all of the AFCS services at the center as well as the social skills groups. Our space for the center was also provided by AFCS, a former child development center now renovated which is adjacent to the Madigan campus.
We recognize that many of our autism families live in communities outside of the base, and that they may prefer to get treatment closer to home. For these families, our JBLM CARES Center will provide oversight for this care and they will still have access to AFCS services. For families who live on or near base, the center will be available as their treatment home. We do not anticipate any families being required to leave their existing community therapy. We will also directly care for all patients with new diagnoses and families new to JBLM until they can transfer to therapy closer to their home and school; we want to bridge any gaps to ensure continuity of treatment. We expect to provide direct care for about 150 children monthly at the center.
We're excited to offer these much-needed services and treatments to our exceptional families right here at Madigan, and we expect by doing so that wait times to start treatment will decrease as well. We believe that as we provide better support to our special needs kids and their families, our community and military readiness improves. And that's something we can all celebrate.
Social Sharing