Oklahoma City firefighters are receiving specialized training and resources to better support autistic individuals during emergencies, thanks to local partnerships and initiatives.
Challenges Faced by Families with Special Needs
Lt. Ryan Woodward of the Oklahoma City Fire Department highlighted the challenges faced by families with special needs during crisis situations. “We see these when we run these, these kind of calls. There’s a lot of these families that are just hanging on by their fingernails, you know, trying to get through every day — where and you have elderly people taking care of adults with all kinds of different special needs. And we just need to make sure that we take good care of this population because they’re just trying to get through every day,” Woodward said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 35 Oklahoma children is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, meaning firefighters often encounter patients on the spectrum during calls. “It can either be driver is autistic or passenger is autistic,” Woodward said.
New Resources and Training
To address these situations, firefighters will soon have access to communication cards available in both English and Spanish. “When they’re stressed, we can offer them a communication card. And these are available in both English and in Spanish, and they can indicate to us what they’re wanting and needing, whereas maybe verbalizing those things would be very difficult for them in the middle of an emergency. Seventy percent of our patients are autistic. Patients, when stressed, are going to have a very difficult time to communicate whatever is going on,” Woodward said.
Emily Scott, executive director of the Autism Foundation Oklahoma, emphasized the importance of equipping first responders with the right tools and training. “We want them to feel completely equipped and completely trained in order to help these individuals. Some of the stuff that’s in the way, the boy did headphones, they didn’t want you to hear anything in there that you want to speak to and how it would impact someone while they’re at any crisis situations. So, these kits were really thoughtfully put together by individuals with autism, with parents, our staff, who’s experienced in these situations,” Scott said.
The kits include items such as fidget spinners, headphones and communication booklets to help autistic individuals effectively communicate during crises. Woodward noted that the training is already making a difference. “I get emails and text messages quite often from people saying, ‘Hey, I took your class, and because of that, we were able to deal with this situation.’ Or I’ve had people call me in the middle of an emergency and say, ‘Hey, we have this going on. What should we do? How should we deal with this?'”
Original reporting: Oklahoma City News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
