AUCD Central Office News

AUCD Sponsored the 2012 National Forum on Disability Issues, An Historic Nonpartisan Event

Attendees heard statements on disability policy delivered by representatives of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. They were Edward M. Kennedy Jr. and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., respectively. Also attending were the two major-party candidates for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat, incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown and his Republican challenger, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel. Selected photos are now available on the NFDI Facebook page. More photos and a full length video archive will be available shortly at www.nfdi.org.

AIDD-AUCD Disability Leadership Fellow Opportunity

The Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD) Association of University Centers on Disabilities (AUCD) Fellowship program seeks to recruit outstanding individuals from within in the UCEDD community for an intensive year-long experience in Washington, D.C. at the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD), within the Administration on Community Living (ACL) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Read more and apply by December 15, 2012.

2013 AUCD Disability Leadership Policy Fellow: Call for Applications

The purpose of the Fellowship is to provide significant experiences in national level activities related to policy and legislative development, advocacy, program development, technical assistance, and AUCD administration. The Fellowship in Disability Policy Leadership is envisioned as a mutually beneficial arrangement between the Fellow, the home UCEDD/LEND/IDDRC program and the AUCD central office. Read more and apply.

Exciting news! Our AUCD facebook page is nearing a milestone number of fans! Are you a fan yet?

Network News - Awards

Maureen van Stone, Esq., M.S., (MD UCEDD) Receives 2012 Leadership in Law Award

Maureen van Stone, Esq., M.S., the Associate Director of the Maryland Center for Developmental Disabilities was selected as one of the 24 honorees of The Daily Record's 2012 Leadership in Law awards. This award honors judges and lawyers for their professional achievement, commitment to community service, and outstanding mentoring efforts.

Utah UCEDD Researcher Honored for Contributions to Children with Sensory Impairments

Over the summer, the American Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired recognized Elizabeth Dennison for written work that has significantly impacted her field. It gave her the bi-annual Warren Bledsoe Award for curricula that have trained professionals in 44 states and six countries. Dennison directs the SKI-HI Institute, a group of professionals dedicated to improving the lives of children and families with special needs. It is now located within the CPD's Research and Evaluation Division at Utah State University. Read more...

Betsey Benson, PHD, (OH Nisonger UCEDD/LEND) Is Promoted to APA Fellow

Betsey Benson, PhD, director of the Adult Behavior Support Services Program at The Ohio State University Nisonger Center (OH UCEDD/LEND) and associate professor of clinical psychiatry and clinical psychology at Ohio State, has been elected as "Fellow" of the American Psychological Association. Fellow status is awarded on the basis of evidence of outstanding contribution in the field of psychology. Read more...

Network News - People on the Move

Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire Appoints Associate Director

The IOD is pleased to announce the appointment of Susan Fox, M.Ed., M.A., as its Associate Director, effective July 1, 2012. Sue has been with the IOD since 2002. She currently serves as the co-director of the UNH Center on Aging and Community Living and is a clinical assistant professor with the Institute on Disability. Read more...

Network News - Activities & Resources

TN UCEDD Produces Training Video for Attorneys on Providing Legal Services to Persons With Disabilities

The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center (TN UCEDD), working with the Tennessee Supreme Court's Access to Justice Commission (ATJ) and Disability Law & Advocacy Center of Tennessee, recently developed an important training video that will help attorneys and legal agencies that work with people with disabilities. The video, Providing Legal Services to Persons with Disabilities, was created to raise awareness and reduce the barriers persons with disabilities face when seeking legal services. Read more...

KS UCEDD/LEND Develops New Resource and Starts New Project

New Communication Scale for People with Severe Disabilities Who Use Few or No Spoken Words Developed by Researchers at the University of Kansas

A new communication scale for people with severe disabilities who use few or no spoken words was developed by a team of researchers led by Nancy Brady, assistant professor of speech, language, hearing sciences and disorders and associate research professor at the Life Span Institute at the University of Kansas. The Communications Complexity Scale (CCS) is a scale for researchers and clinicians to measure the communication development of children and adults with disabilities as diverse as autism spectrum disorders, deaf-blindness and cerebral palsy. Read more...

Researchers at the University of Kansas to Establish the SWIFT Center (School-wide Integrated Framework for Transformation)

Researchers at the University of Kansas have been awarded a five-year, $24.5 million grant to develop a national center to assist schools across the country to implement KU's successful model for educating general and special education students together and improve schoolwide academic outcomes. The award from the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs will establish the SWIFT Center (School-wide Integrated Framework for Transformation) to be directed by Wayne Sailor, associate director of the KU Life Span Institute's Beach Center on Disability. Read more...

Iowa's UCEDD Prescribes Fun and Games as Potential Best Practice

Kids who receive clinical services from the Center for Disabilities and Development (CDD) at the University of Iowa are having an awful lot of fun these days. A new program, "Prescription to Play," can make a visit to CDD to receive therapy for a developmental need almost as much fun as going to the playground-really! This new program at CDD's Disability Resource Library (DRL), which focuses on children aged 3 to 12 years, lends therapeutic equipment to family members of children with developmental skill deficits. Read more...

Institute on Disabilities at Temple University (PA UCEDD) to Start Six New Projects

The institute on Disabilities at Temple University, College of Education, has been awarded six new grants, beginning in the early summer, addressing a wide range of topics, goals and outcomes.

Parent Leadership in Inclusive Education targets parents of children with disabilities being educated outside of the traditional public school system - at home, in cyber charter schools, charter, private and parochial schools.
The Criminal Justice Disability Awareness project aims to develop a training curriculum for personnel working within the criminal justice system, which will focus on issues related to disability awareness.
The First Responders Disability Awareness project will develop, produce and distribute a curriculum to enable first responders to accommodate the needs of people with a wide range of disabilities.
Transitions in Aging and Adulthood for People with Developmental Disabilities will to measure satisfaction levels of services provided to aging adults with disabilities.
Part of a planning grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Heritage Philadelphia Program, the Institute will explore the concept of public performance to engage the larger community in a dialogue around disability issues and contribute to the greater body of knowledge about the experience of intellectual disability, and its impact on families and communities.
The Federal Communications Commission in partnership with the Governmental Affairs Bureau has selected the Institute to be Pennsylvania's designated agency for its National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program, which will serve deaf-blind Pennsylvanians across the Commonwealth to provide access to communication technology.
Read more about all projects...

The Global Partnership on Children with Disabilities Holds Its First Forum

The Global Partnership on Children with Disabilities held its first forum in New York City September 14-15, 2012. More than 250 people attended from countries throughout the world. In addition to panel discussions and country level networking sessions, a reception was held in which several UN ambassadors and Dr. Tim Schiver from Special Olympics spoke on behalf of the work of UNICEF. Dr. Barbara LeRoy, Director of the Developmental Disabilities Institute at Wayne State University in Michigan and Dr. Jean Johnson, Associate Director, and Ms. Charmaine Crockett, Director of Special Events at the Center on Disability Studies at the University of Hawaii, received invitations to participate in this international forum. Read more...

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) LEND Faculty to Start a 2-year Pilot Autism Research Project

Dr. Katherine Bevans, CHOP LEND Research faculty, received a federal grant, from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), to help establish methods for ensuring that families' health-related goals are included as outcomes in clinical trials and comparative effectiveness research. The project will develop an interactive computer-based program that will allow parents and children to make a series of choices about their aspirations for treatment. Read more...

'Understanding a Down Syndrome Diagnosis' Booklet Available Through Kennedy Foundation and Kentucky's Human Development Institute

Copyright to the nationally lauded, "Understanding a Down Syndrome Diagnosis" booklet has been donated to the The Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Foundation. The booklet will continue to be available in print and as a free digital download through the Lettercase program at the University of Kentucky's Human Development Institute (HDI). Read more...

KY UCEDD Also Develops Resource for Improving Mental Health Professional Competencies in Providing Competent Care to Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

The Human Development Institute, University of Kentucky, announces the development of a web-based training module for improving mental health professionals' abilities to provide competent, ethical services to adults with intellectual disabilities: Working Together Toward Recovery. Read more...

Kennedy Krieger Institute (MD UCEDD) Is Featured in the Media

The Baltimore Sun reported on the Kennedy Krieger Institute's third annual Camp S.O.A.R or Sibling Outdoor Adventure Retreat this summer. About half of the 39 campers are its young patients, who deal daily with physical and mental challenges and the other campers are their siblings. The counselors organize diverse activities while attending to the needs of children with traumatic brain injuries, cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome and paralysis.

In an interview for Today Health, Dr. Mark Mahone, director of neuropsychology at the Kennedy Krieger Institute outlined 10 behaviors that should cause parents to have their children evaluated for ADHD. Read more...

Evidence-based Practice Resource Developed by the AZ IHD UCEDD

The Institute for Human Development at Northern Arizona University has launched a new product called Bridge Briefs: A Research to Practice Resource. The goal of this 2-page article abridgement is to translate research reports into practitioner-friendly recommendations by contextualizing the study in the Best Available Evidence, Professional Judgment, and Client and Family Values and Preferences. Read more...

Submissions

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Gloria Krahn, Ph.D., M.P.H. of the Centers for Disease Control, Delivers A 40th Anniversary Series Lecture at The Westchester Institute for Human Development UCEDD

On September 27th, Dr. Gloria Krahn delivered a lecture entitled "Health Disparities of People with Intellectual Disabilities: What we know, What to do" as part of The Westchester Institute for Human Development's (WIHD) 40th Anniversary Lecture Series. Dr. Krahn reviewed what is known about health needs and health disparities for people with intellectual disabilities on both a national and international basis. Read more...

2012-2013 LEND Pediatric Audiology Webinar Series

To an infant or child, being able to hear is important for the development of speech, language and learning. The earlier a child with hearing loss begins to receive services, the more likely they are to reach their full potential.

This year, LEND Pediatric Audiology Training Programs have decided to engage their trainees in a different kind of leadership activity. They will assist in the development of a webinar series. The series will include 4 webinars, each 90 minutes in length. Please mark your calendar for our first webinar scheduled for Monday, October 29th from 4:00-5:30pm EST. This webinar will feature two pediatric audiology training programs: The UCLID Center at the University of Pittsburgh and the Children's Hospital in Boston. Read more and register.

AUCD 2012: Innovating Today, Shaping Tomorrow

Join AUCD on December 2-5, 2012 at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, to learn and share today's promising practices and innovations that shape the lives of people with disabilities and their families through research, policy, education, and service.

Register today!

Special offer for AUCD Network members: For member LEND, UCEDD, and IDDRC program personnel and trainees, after the first five registrations, the sixth and subsequent will automatically receive a 20% discount off of the main registration fee.

Early Bird Registration: Register by October 15th and be entered to win a free conference main registration fee for the 2011 conference! Two winners will be randomly drawn and notified on October 17th.

Conference Agenda

Be sure to check the agenda to learn about important changes to the conference schedule and learn about all the exciting workshops, symposia, and special events scheduled for this year.

Opening Plenary: Order and Disorder in the Developing Emotional Brain: Prospects for Cultivating Healthy Minds

AUCD is thrilled to have Dr. Richard J. Davidson of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison as our opening plenary speaker. Learn more about this exciting plenary and Dr. Davidson here.

National Disability Inclusion Leadership Development Institute

December 10-11, 2012
Arlington, VA

The National Service Inclusion Project is excited to announce that registration for the 2012 National Disability Inclusion Leadership Institute is officially OPEN!

The 2012 National Disability Leadership Institute convenes leaders from national service programs, State Service Commissions, State Education Agencies, state and national nonprofit organizations, federal agencies and disability organizations whose missions include the meaningful inclusion of individuals with disabilities.

Topics will include: Disability Inclusion Train-the-Trainer, Veterans and Wounded Warrior Advanced Institute Training and Service as a Path to Employment Advanced Institute Track: Together we will explore how service participants. Read more and register.