Thank you for visiting our webpage.   Jake is my 6 year old son with PDD-NOS, pervasive developmental disorder - not otherwise specified, a disability on the Autism Spectrum.

After being diagnosed with PDD-Autism in August of 2005 when he was 22 months old, the quest for proper services began.  We were told he needed 40 hours per week of ABA therapy (Applied Behavior Analysis) using a discrete trial method.  The doctor had no answers as to whether or not the therapy would work, whether Jake would ever talk, or whether Jake would even respond to it, he could only say that ABA is the most proven effective method for teaching children with autism.   We had no idea what ABA was, what it cost or who provided it, we were only told that he needed it, and he needed to start today.   I cut back my hours at work to stay at home and get my son exactly what that doctor had said he needed.  

Jake was non-verbal at that time, meaning he had no language and wasn't talking.   He was making strange, repetetive luckaluckalucka sounds, but no words.  We had been bringing him for private speech therapy since he was 15 months old.   He had no eye contact and couldn't sit still or attend to anything for more than a few seconds before he was up and running again.   

Obtaining ABA therapy during Early Intervention was relatively easy.  I called the ABA providers for our area of the state, and eventually we had ABA therapists coming to the house on a daily basis, sometimes 3-4 different therapists over the course of a day.   Jake's ABA therapy started just before his 2nd birthday.  We were so intent on getting him the 40 hours that the doctor had recommended, that we became prisoners in our own house.   My 3 year old daughter Piper and I were housebound while Jake received up to 8 hours of ABA, Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy per day.   We also had Floor Time therapy a few hours per week to work on Jake's play skills.  Naps became a thing of the past, Jake learned to work through them - yet he made up for it on the weekends by taking 4-5 hour naps!   Immediately after services started we began to see progress, yet Jake still wouldn't talk.

When Jake turned 3, Early Intervention ended and the public school system took over his care.   We were faced with a battle for services that seems to be the same story for every mom I've talked to.   Jake was just beginning to talk, his first combination of 2 words happened in August of 2006.   The school claimed that Jake did not need ABA therapy anymore (yet he had 5 hours of it the day before he turned 3), he no longer needed 1:1 speech therapy and that a 5 hour day in a classroom was sufficient for him.  We hired an attorney to help us with our fight, and at the same time we began paying for ABA therapy privately.  Jake would take the bus from school directly to Futures Behavior Therapy Center where they evaluated him and started doing ABA therapy with him every day after school.    We continued to bring him for private 1:1 speech therapy at OTA in Wakefield where we still go once a week to see the same speech therapist who worked with him when he was 15 months old.    

During this time, I went back to graduate school for a Masters Certificate in Behavior Analysis.   I also became an Educational Advocate through the Federation for Children with Special Needs www.fcsn.org.    I currently provide advocacy services on a pro-bono basis to families who need help, because they need to know where to go.  I obtained all the information on my own, and have since helped many moms navigate the system and have their questions answered.

We have spent tens of thousands of dollars on private therapies for Jake, and if you met him today you probably would not know that he has Autism.   He is fully verbal and on many days I laugh, thinking to myself, "if he would only be quiet for 2 minutes!"   Jake has friends, he attends a small Private integrated Kindergarten.   He no longer needs 1:1 discrete trial training to learn, although his social skills and language training are still done in an ABA format.   Jake is slowly conquering every obstacle that gets in his way.   I'm not saying that he is typical, he still has many symptoms of PDD and can be quirky and odd, but compared to the little boy that was diagnosed 4+ years ago, we wouldn't take back a penny of the money we've spent.    The schools scoff when they see "40 hours of ABA therapy" written into a report - yet with 40 hours of ABA, children are coming out of their shells, learning to speak and making tremendous gains that they are not making with public school programming alone. 

I started For Jake's Sake to collect donations and give the money back to the parents who aren't as lucky as we've been, in being able to privately pay for everything Jake has needed.  For example:  A child with 2 sessions of private speech therapy per week could be faced with co-pays of $50 - $80/week.   Many families, especially in our current economic situation, can't afford those added expenses.    Believe it or not, there are still some privately funded insurance companies that will not cover speech therapy for a child with autism - like Aetna and some privately funded Tufts plans (I hope their execs someday read this), so those parents are left paying the full amount for a speech session, which can run from $100 - $175 per hour.  ABA therapy costs approximately $55 per hour, and with children needing 20-40 hours per week, most families can't afford the one therapy that could give their child a chance to make the gains they may not otherwise make.

I saw what ABA and private speech therapy did for my son, and I believe every child on the autism spectrum deserves to be given those same opportunities.   I am hoping people will open up their hearts, and donate to For Jake's Sake, to give autistic children a chance.