Main Streaming Autistic Children: Part 2 of the Interview with Life Skill's Jeanne Marshall

Part 2 of a two part interview with Jeanne Marshall, a lifetime Autism educator.

Patch: Do you try and mainstream as many of your kids with Autism as is possible.

Marshall: We would try and have as many of our kids in school but there has to be a very high level of support for them. Teachers don’t know how to support these students and there has to be some training along that path. We have a variety of staff who have worked 15 to 20 years to train the teachers, the parents and the grandparents. We call it natural support. We do training for teachers aids, bus drivers, EMS personnel, everybody.

We do a lot of child specific consultation calls. We do inservice training for the teachers to try and get through each situation.

Patch: What is Life Skills mission.

Marshall: We work had everyone to live in independent living in community situations. We have a range of hundreds of people we support out in the community. We have folks who live in homes and apartments and we do maybe 10 hours of support a week with them.

We help them with their budgets, their groceries and their medical supplies. Most are employed and there are some situations where we have 24 hour care, seven days a week.

Patch: What is the biggest concerns of parents.

Marshall: The No. 1 concern is who will care for my child when I die. I need to have my child in a place he feels safe and will have people who will care for him and look after him.

Patch: Do you have a relationship with Rainbow Village.

Marshall: Rainbow Village is a client service program and they own homes and we have a number of homes where they manage the property for us.

Patch: How do we break down the barriers to the stigmatism to Autism.

Marshall: I will tell you what what we’ve done in the last 10 years of educating the public is remarkable and 10 years ago people hardly knew what Autism was. We found the people didn’t know the word at all. We’d get calls where people would say “oh my kid is really good at art.”

has spoken to over 10,000 people the last three years. We do training with first responders all over the state. Saint Louis U and Washington University schools of medicine will send their interns in those areas to TouchPoint to learn more about the care of Autism. The research that is out there today is remarkably solid. There are numbers that indicate 47 percent of kids who get early intervention can get into mainstream schools. That doesn’t happen unless you start early and intensive. Educating the parents, doctors, pediatricians is critical.

Patch: How do you get by financially.

Marshall: The fundraisers and initiative we do throughout the year are important. Without the fundraising, we would not exist. Everyone has a good cause, and its incumbent upon us to be very responsible with our dollars.