Autism support group highlights awareness
Published 6:12 am Thursday, August 16, 2012
Lpast Thursday the St. Clair Autism Awareness group had their monthly meeting at the First United Methodist Church in Pell City. This meeting had Birmingham firefighter James Mulkey talk about autism awareness for emergency responders.
This class was to let the parents know what the responders have been learning about responding to the home of an autistic child or adult and provided some ways to identify if there is an autistic person present in a home.
Mulkey said that his son, Douglas, was diagnosed in 2004, and for years he didn’t know how to interact with him since it wasn’t something that he encountered everyday.
“The autistic children we encounter today are the autistic adults we must interact with tomorrow.” Mulkey said while going through the slideshow he usually shows his classes. He said that statistically, people with autism are seven times more likely to have encounters with emergency responders.
This is something he makes sure that the responders in his class understand along with the fact that autism is classified as the “invisible disease” because there are no physical indicators to show if someone is autistic.
Mulkey informed parents at the meeting that the amount of children born with autism grows by 10-17 percent each year, and with that rate, one out of eighty-eight kids have it, even if it’s undiagnosed.
Mulkey has taught classes for the autism awareness in Henry County, Jefferson Country and St. Clair County. He says that the class helps responders interact autuistic individuals, not just identifying people with autism.
The classes are four hours long and gives responders tips with handling autistic people, ways to identify them and real experiences of parents with autistic family members.
“I’m not an expert, but I live with one, and he teaches me something new everyday.” Mulkey said when he mentioned that he had a fireman ask what made him an expert in teaching responders about working with autistic people.
Mulkey also said training for first responders in the communities to know how to deal with an autistic person in an emergency situation reduces liability on the city because now the emergency personnel know identifiers and how to handle it.
He has suggested to the people he has taught to make a map of places that people with autism could wander off to since most of them are prone to wandering. Since they are attracted to water, trains and train tracks, the most common places to search for someone with autism first would be pools, ponds and railroad tracks.
He told the parents in the group about personal stories with his own son and calls that he has run in Birmingham that involved autistic people, whether or not they were the physical victim in the emergency.
“At that point, you have more than one victim, because autistic people aren’t able to comprehend what’s happening.”
