Tower of hope for autism
Light It Up Blue campaign kicks off worldwide awareness event
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Friday, April 4, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
April is autism awareness month, and people in Yellowknife who are affected with the disorder are showing support and raising awareness.
Jon Proulx sprays water and blue food colouring onto the ice blocks of the Tower of Hope. - Candace Thomson/NNSL photo |
Autism, or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), is a wide-ranging disorder that affects people's ability to understand social cues and the development of communication skills. People are born with autism and can be diagnosed as early as age two, but might not show symptoms until after age four.
While it varies per case and often exists alongside other disabilities, it is not always crippling.
"Individuals can be very high functioning," said Lynn Elkin, director of the Yellowknife Association for Community Living (YACL).
"How the brain transmits and receives messages is different in these individuals so they have to learn things in a different way, and if we work with individuals and encourage new ways of thinking they can keep the things that are really great about their autism, like great attention to detail or memory skills."
The Light It Up Blue campaign kicked off on Wednesday, which was World Autism Awareness Day, during which GNWT employees, politicians, students and other groups were encouraged to wear blue -the official colour of support for the disorder.
On Tuesday, members of the YACL took to the snow and built a tower made of old ice candles that Vera Nesbitt, family and children services co-ordinator for the association, called a "Tower of Hope."
"We had ice block candles leftover from our sales at Christmas and said this is something we can do on the second of April in Yellowknife and it's visible," Elkin said.
"We could all wear T-shirts that day, but nobody would see it."
Half of the people who use the services at the association have some form of ASD, according to Elkin.
"There are a lot of people around us with autism. It's your friends, your neighbours," she said. "I think it's really important to understand people with autism as they're a large part of our community."
She said the condition makes it difficult for children in the school system, and then as adults when ready to enter the workforce.
"Not many parents have to stand and teach their child how to interact with others in a Grade 6 classroom but for a child with autism you actually have to teach some of those social things, and how to read different social cues," Elkin said.
Children with autism are also 78 per cent more likely to be bullied, according to Denise McKee, president of the NWT Autism Society and the NWT Disabilities Council.
"Most of the kids with autism will experience bullying between the grades of five to eight," said McKee. "That's when it starts to kick in, and as you work through high school the differences in the gaps in relationships with other youth becomes greater and ability to move into employment, other fields, and the transition from high school into post-secondary school or the job market becomes more difficult."
While YACL does offer mentoring, family support, literacy, life skills development and employment workshops and services, there are some areas where the NWT is lacking in the supports it has for children and adults with autism, said McKee.
"Some of the services we're lacking in the territories are early intervention, transitional programs for youth, employment, housing and professionals to diagnose and to give supports," said McKee.
A University of Calgary study estimated that for a family to support one individual with autism, it will cost $5.5 million throughout the individual's lifetime, McKee said.
Despite the challenges and the cost of services, autism can also be a thing of beauty, according to Elkin.
"If you talk to a number of folks in the North who have high-functioning autism, they feel it's an important part of who they are," said Eklin.
"They know it makes them a little bit different in some aspects of their life but they're not unhappy because they feel it gives them a different set of skills."
While there are no available statistics on autism in the NWT or Canada, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States released a report on March 31 that shows a rise of the disorder in children in the U.S.
In a study done using the health records of children who were eight years old and living in 11 different states, the centre was able to determine that one in 68 of the children studied were diagnosed with autism. That's a 30 per cent increase from 2008, a 60 per cent increase from 2006 and a 120 per cent increase from 2002.
"We don't know what is causing this increase," the report states. "Some of it may be due to the way children are identified, diagnosed, and served in their local communities, but exactly how much is unknown."
The study showed boys were almost five times more likely to be identified with ASD than girls, with caucasian children more likely to be identified than black or Hispanic children. Most children identified were not diagnosed until after age four, even though children can be diagnosed as early as two years of age.
