Florida's autism services mess

By Michael Moline | Editor in Chief

A form of therapy provided to kids with autism spectrum disorder and others with special needs is called applied behavior analysis, or ABA, which “uses structured interventions to decrease maladaptive behaviors and reinforce appropriate ones,” our Christine Sexton reports. Florida is spending vastly more money to provide these services than peer states — $6.57 billion over two years compared to the next biggest spenders, Indiana ($1.65 billion) and North Carolina ($1.53 billion). Florida provides the services to about 55,000 kids under age 20, amid disruptions as the state drops providers or they themselves drop out of the program because they’re unhappy with their reimbursement rates. A task force is studying the situation. “Aggressive enforcement or administrative delays must never compound these delays for a child receiving early intervention services when a short pause in therapy causes devastating developmental regression,” said Nicole Grabner, mother of two autistic children.

The same applies to torture, as inflicted by the Bush administration during the “Global War on Terror,” Sarah K. Lischer, an associate professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University, writes. “Denial of child sexual abuse occurs within a community – a citizenry, a family, a congregation. The community establishes the parameters of morality, the relative power of each member, and which actions constitute crimes,” she notes. “In cases where accepting the truth has a high communal cost – a reordering of the power structure, more egalitarian institutions, eradication of prejudice or social disgrace – many people calculate that the cost of justice is not worth reordering the structure of privilege from which they benefit.”

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