November 2010

Dear Woodall Kids Family and Friends:

As Thanksgiving approaches, we would like to express our gratitude. We are grateful for the continuing support from our clients and friends, and for our ability to meet the ever changing needs of the community we serve. We would like to share some of our accomplishments over the last year that would have been impossible without your support.

In January, we piloted our Communication and Life Skills (CALS) program. The CALS program serves a population of students who have been unsuccessful in their traditional special education classrooms and struggle tremendously with their functional communication and basic daily living skills. It is designed to teach children ages 7-11 functional communication and basic life skills. This program has been a huge success from its inception and fulfills a need in the community for a population of children that has been underserved.

Additionally, we piloted our Targeted Intervention for Elementary Students (TIES) program in March of this year. This program serves a group of children who are currently in restricted classroom settings. Our goal is to address the reasons these children have not moved to a less restricted classroom setting and teach the necessary cognitive, behavioral, and language skills. We are pleased these children have learned to be more independent and these skills are carrying over to their classrooms.
We have expanded our Social Skills groups to include 15 groups that run weekly. Additionally, we have added Language groups that are facilitated by our Speech Pathologists. The goal of these groups is to promote language in a naturalistic play setting.
We are pleased and thankful to announce that we have graduated five children this year so far. We also have five more children on the track to graduate by next summer. These children have been placed in mainstream educational settings and are considered to be indistinguishable from their typically developing peers. We have also transitioned three children into less intensive programs or school settings. While these children still require some level of support, they no longer need the intensive services provided by the BWF.

We would not have accomplished all that we have this year without our amazing  and dedicated staff. Our staff works for substantially less pay than if they worked at other therapeutic centers. They do this because they share our mission: to make a difference in the lives of children with autism and their families!  With the help of our staff and dedicated supporters, we continue to offer services at 50-90% less than similar programs in the DFW area.

But most of all, this year, we are grateful for the opportunity we have to come to work every day and work with some amazing children and families. We are able to witness little moments like a child accomplishing something they have been struggling with or saying a new word for the first time. We are truly grateful for all the little moments. We would like to close with an email that was sent to us recently by  a parent of one of our kiddos:

Can I share real quick with you the primitive little conversation I had with Jakob this morning? Made my day!  It went like this.
He tried pulling me out of bed while he said “up, up, up” over and over until I got up.
I said “ok Jakob, I’m up, what do you want?”
Jakob looks me right in the eyes and said “baba” (which is his sippie cup)
I said “you want a baba?”
Jakob said “yeah” and nodded. =)
I went and got his milk sippie and gave it to him.

Jakob took one sip and handed it back… looks me in the eyes again and said “baba”.

I said “this is a milk baba”
Jakob handed it back to me, shook his head no and said “ baba”
I said “do you want juice?”
Jakob, looking relieved, said “yeah… juuuuice” and nodded.
I replaced the milk with juice and he was very happy.  =)

YAY! Words! We kinda had a conversation there, our first.  =)  I love that boy! 

Thank you once again! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!

If you would like to donate to the Woodallkids, CLICK HERE!

Sincerely,
Tracy Pierce Bender and the BWF Directors