TAP Service Center at Charleston
I volunteered my hours at the TAP Service Center at the Charleston Transitional Facility. "TAP" is the acronym for The Autism Program. Children with autism are dear to my heart because I have worked with several during my teaching years at Head Start.
What is Autism? Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with and relates to other people. Persons with autism have difficulty with social interactions.
How does TAP assist persons with Autism? The TAP Center provides residential, counseling, and therapy services. Their emphasis is on services to children.
FCS concepts. Some of my volunteer hours were spent maintaining resources for the resource room. As FCS professionals, we need to be aware of resources available for families who are disadvantaged and TAP is a great resource. TAP from the Charleston and Olney locations serve more than 16,000 families each year in Illinois. The program is a community outreach service by offering the family and community resource room, food and nutrition-related consultations, and new diagnosis family orientations. The program develops practices and trainings to provide new information and skills to parents, caregivers, teachers, and even physicians. Support groups are available through the program for families who feel overwhelmed and unsupported. There are also workshops for siblings to help them understand the difficulties of being a sibling to a child with autism.
Networking Opportunity. Other volunteer hours at the TAP center was to assist the program director with setting up for their annual Fall Festival. At the festival is where I had the opportunity to interact with the children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and their families. A variety of activities was available. I was stationed at the table for painting pinecones. Because I have worked with children with autism before, I knew the importance of giving visual support; so I showed them how to hold and paint the pinecone so they would understand the process. They enjoyed dipping the pinecones in the paint and finding a branch in the nearby tree to hang them on for drying. Few of the children expressed feelings with verbal communication (although the joy could be seen in their reactions!) and rarely did they make eye contact. They pointed to the colors of paint they wanted to use. Family members were often present to assist. Other activities for the evening were leaf rubbings, digging for prizes in the hay pile, bean bag toss, and ball throwing. By observing, I noticed that the children with autism did not seek out the company of others and preferred to experience the activities alone rather than together.
Life Lessons. As learned in class: "about 1 in 5 Americans have some sort of documented disability that impairs or interferes with their ability to see, hear, walk, lift, and/or learn." People first language is important in the FCS field. There are no two persons with autism exactly alike. We don't all have to be the same. But as professionals, we need to treat others with respect and the way we would like to be treated ourselves.
