Hi my name is Kris Ray. I have a 2 year old daughter, Maddie Grace, on the spectrum. I have recently volunteered to manage child care for our support group meetings and am planning on making the following process changes. I would love to get feedback on these changes and would most welcome your suggestions or resource connections that will help improve this service for our families. You can comment on the discussion, or send your feedback directly to me at childcare@asaheartland.org 1) Registration a) Require parents/guardians who RSVP for child care to complete and return a registration form profiling their child(ren) and their special needs (dietary, sensory, toileting, etc). This information will be provided to child care volunteers. b) Add a Check-In/Check-Out process so we can track who is supposed to be in the room and ensure they leave only with their parent or guardian. c) Page Outs - If parental assistance is required during the meeting, does everyone have a mobile phone we can call? If not or the phones don't get good signals in the church basement, I would like to check into purchasing a pager system. This would be less disruptive to our meetings and ensure the volunteer engages the "right" parent (vs having to remember a face). 2) Safety a) Require background checks on the volunteers. I certainly don't want to offend our volunteers who have so graciously and lovingly offered their time to help us out, but I do want to provide peace of mind to our families. b) Provide bios/pictures of our volunteers to the parents so they know a little bit about who is working with their children 3) Education a) In addition to providing profile information of the children to our volunteers (see #1a), provide general education on Autism, Aspergers, and Sensory Processing Disorder to our volunteers, including tips on how to best work and communicate with our children. b) Spend 30 minutes prior to every meeting (6:30 - 7:00) with the volunteers to cover the guidelines and address any questions they have about the children and their needs. 4) Activities a) If you have recommendations for good/safe activities for the children please send them my way :) I'm trying to convince our music therapist to come one evening! If you have therapists/teachers who work with your children that would like to come lead activities once in a while, please connect them with me!
