ARI e-newsletter for November 2009

Valerie Paradiz, Ph.D. is intimately familiar with the concept of self-advocacy from both sides of the fence. Professionally, she created Integrated Self-Advocacy (ISA) as a curriculum and training series for educators, therapists, and support people. Personally, she saw the dire need for self-advocacy to help her teenaged son with Asperger's.

"Elijah was my inspiration for developing the Integrated Self-Advocacy curriculum," says Paradiz. "He felt lonely, he was having difficulty expressing himself and getting his needs met, he was getting bullied, and he became very depressed. Once he was able to become his own self-advocate, life changed for him."

Dr. Paradiz has a long history of involvement with transitioning and self-advocacy. In 2003, she founded a school for teens with Asperger's, the ASPIE School (Autistic Strength Purpose and Independence in Education). One of the core educational philosophies of the school was self-advocacy, which empowers students to become active shapers of their sensory and social environments.

"For sensory scans,"explains Paradiz, "it all begins with knowing yourself and your specific needs." If an individual on the spectrum is in school or at a workplace setting and feels overwhelmed, they have to first assess the surroundings to determine the possible cause. For example, if they become distracted by fluorescent lighting, or the smell of someone's perfume, they need to first identify this so they can express their needs and take steps to correct or reduce the offending sensory stimulus. "It's important to remember," says Paradiz, "that the strategies and awareness fostered by the curriculum apply to both vocal and non-vocal individuals."

The same kind of awareness building can apply in social situations. Before the individual takes steps toward more conventional social interactions, the Integrated Self-Advocacy ISA Curriculum coaches the teacher, therapist, or parent on how to encourage self-reflection and self-discovery in spectrum children, so they can realize specifically which types of situations are most comfortable and which provoke the most discomfort and anxiety.

Since the early years in the ASPIE School, Dr. Paradiz has enhanced and expanded the lessons, piloting the self-advocacy curriculum in schools across the United States and internationally. She recently returned from training professionals in the Philippines, and will be bringing her workshops to India and Aruba in 2010.

The ISA curriculum has been adopted systemically by the Socorro Independent School District in El Paso; the staff was trained by Dr. Paradiz. She has also brought the program to the New York City Department of Education's District 75, a Special Education district that serves over 5,000 students on the spectrum. Paradiz does ongoing consulting there so that the district can build capacity, bringing self-advocacy tools to all its ASD students.

In addition to educators and therapists, ISA can also be a valuable tool for parents. It's designed to assist parents in introducing essential concepts and "survival skills," such as facilitating sensory and social self-awareness, fostering strategies for navigating self-disclosure, and teaching other building blocks that lead to autonomous self-advocacy.

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The Integrated Self-Advocacy ISA Curriculum is available on Amazon.com, at Dr. Paradiz' website www.valerieparadiz.com, and through the publisher, Autism Asperger Publishing Company (AAPC).