Missing At-Risk Person, Colorado Springs, CO

Readers,
My husband and I know this family. This is not one of those email scams. Please help find Jason.

At Risk: Missing since Jan. 5, 2009 from Colorado Springs CO

JASON HOLLEY age 22

Mentally Handicapped, 22 year old male with Klinefelter Syndrome.

Jason is shy, mild mannered, and somewhat immature with a slight hand tremor. He may be wearing a white hoodie with a print of broken money pieces and likely has a black backpack
and a cell phone with him.

Height: 6 feet 6 inches
Weight: 175 pounds, thin tall build.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Light brownish red and wavy
Teeth: Straight

Contact the Colorado Springs Police Dept. at 719-444-7000 or 626-244-3674 if you have any information concerning Jason.

Watch the KKTV News Story

Update: March 18, 2009
For those who have inquired, Jason has not been found. A website has been developed for him at: www.findjasonholley.com.

We Did it! Unite for Change for the Next Round!

I am thrilled to report that my Idea for Change to Fully Fund the Medicaid Waiver Program and create portability of waivers has made it to the next round of voting on Change.org.

We placed 16th out of 7,783 ideas - and did it even though we started later than most of the other ideas. You can see here where we are.

But we have a NEXT round of voting to prove that Funding Medicaid Waivers is one of the top 10 Ideas for Change in America. And we need to unite to get the word out to VOTE beginning January 5. Voting will end on January 15 so that is not much time.

Now I am going to ask everyone to start preparing for round 2. Build your circle of contacts so that you can send messages to hundreds of people at a time to vote. We are probably going to need to get at least 2500 votes to place in the top 10 - maybe even more than that. But there are 300,000 families on waiting lists in America so we should be able to do it, right?

Here is what is at stake for us:

On January 16th, Change.org will co-host an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to announce the top 10 rated ideas and our plans for supporting the formation of a national advocacy campaign behind each idea in collaboration with our nonprofit partners. The top 10 ideas will also be presented to President Obama on inauguration day.

Here's what you can do:

Individuals can:
1. Join a NEW internet support group (or more!). Start with:
Parent to Parent - http://www.p2pusa.org/
Yahoo Groups - http://yahoogroups.com - search for the largest groups you can find and join them. Make sure some are disability related but also join some general interest group. Start participating in the group NOW, so that you can feel comfortable sending a message about voting later.
Moms Like Me - http://www.momslikeme.com
2. Do some Google research to locate groups and organizations that will be interested in voting. Find contacts (preference is by name) and prepare to send them a personal email about what is happening.
3. Contact your local newspaper and tell them about waiting lists and our national Change effort. Point them to the site to read the stories from all over the country.
4. Think about your circle of influence - clubs, church, Linked-in, Myspace, Facebook, PTCO, coworkers, networking groups. Do you have email addresses - or can you get them? Write your own letter to the editor and make sure to include how to vote.
5. Friends and family - who do they know? Start asking now!
6. Do you belong to the national organization associated with your child's condition? If not, join now!

Organizations Can:
1. Get prepared to send out mass emails to your membership.
2. Contact all service providers you know.
3. Contact associations.
4. Contact your national organization if you have one.
5. Contact newspapers. Do press releases and letters to the editor.
6. Post the widget for voting on your web site, blogs, Myspace, Facebooks.
7. Find other contacts in other states and reach out to them.
8. Contact the Chamber of Commerce you belong to and ask for their help.

I will be posting sample messages you can send to people once I have all the info from Change.org.

We can do this!

Ending Waiting Lists Has Made it to the Top 3 Ideas

The idea I posted on Ideas for Change at Change.org to Fully Fund the Medicaid Waiver program and to make waivers portable has made it to the top 3 ideas under health care on Change.org. Voting on the first round will end December 31 at midnight - so please do not stop voting because we could lose our place if others obtain more votes.

It does not end here and we need to mobilize in a very big way to make it to the top 10 ideas for America.

Beginning January 5, there will be another round of voting which will end on January 15. During that round, this idea will compete against all other top ideas in all categories until Ideas for Change has 10 top ideas for America to present to the Obama Administration on inauguration day. Some of the other ideas have had many more votes than ours - so every person and organization interested in ending waiting lists and creating portability will need to help reach thousands of people. Please plan on helping in every way you can.

Info about Ideas for Change and what this means for us:

Ideas for Change in America is a project of Change.org, an online community and media network for social issues, in partnership with more than three dozen leading organizations, including MySpace, techPresident, the Sunlight Foundation, Netroots Nation, Declare Yourself, Student PIRGs, Voto Latino, HeadCount, and Change Congress. We will launch a national campaign behind each of the top 10 ideas and mobilize the collective energy of the millions of members of Change.org, MySpace, and partner organizations to ensure that each winning idea gets the full consideration of the Obama Administration and Members of Congress.

Action Items:
1. From now until the next round of voting, please compile a list of contacts you can reach by email.
2. Join as many Internet support groups as possible and participate in them so that you can post a message to vote on that group. If you go to my main site (linked at the top of the blog) and go to support groups, you can find some there. You can also go to www.yahoogroups.com and find a new group.
3. If you are an organization with a membership base, be ready to send several messages to your members to mobilize them into action.
4. Work on your state: find as many organizations who would be interested in this issue as possible. (Just do a google search). Find people to contact at that organization and send a personalized message about the effort and ask them to do all of these action items as well.
5. If you are really interested and ambitious - find groups in other states to contact.
6. If you are an organization, send out press releases.
7. Put a widget on your Myspace, Facebook, Web site, Blog.
8. If you are an organization, contact your national umbrella org and use every networking method you have to get the word out.
9. Add me to your friends on the Change.org site.

I would very much like to know what you have done to promote this idea for change in America. You can contact me at the email address for this blog or at amazonb@att.net. Either one is fine.

LET'S DO IT. LET'S CHANGE THE PLAYING FIELD FOR KIDS WITH DISABILITIES AND THEIR FAMILIES.

End Waiting Lists

Today, I have added a link to vote on Change.org's site on the extremely important issue of ending waiting lists for people with developmental disabilities. The link is on the right. Please vote today to help us to get the issue to the top of the health care issues addressed by the Obama team.

Update: I understand some of you are having trouble with the voting widget on the right. So if you want to vote to end the waiting lists, click here:

Vote Now!

Thursday, December 18 update:
I have written to countless people asking them to do more to get more votes to End Waiting Lists. I thought I would share some email text that you can send and ideas on how to help do more:

A mom of an adult with a developmental disability in Colorado has created an idea on Change.org to End Waiting Lists for people with developmental disabilities. We need many votes by December 31 to make it to the next round with the very real possibility of the idea being presented to President-Elect Obama on Innaguration Day. After the first round, there will be another round if we have made it to the top of the list. We have already made it to 9th place as of Thursday, December 18 in the Health category of thousands of other ideas because of the first wave of outreach that has already been done on this issue. The power of the Internet is AMAZING and now I ask you - please- to help.

Vote to Fully Fund the Medicaid Waiver Program to End Waiting Lists

There a several ways to get to the voting page and you can choose whatever works for you.

Go Directly:

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/fully_fund_medicaid_waivers_for_the_developmentally_disabled

From NOWAIT's web site

www.noewait.net

(If you are going to tell friends and family who don't know what waiting lists are, this is a good site to send them to)

Or from Renee's blog http://1specialplace.blogspot.com

Next, I am going to ask every parent who reads this email nationwide to take 15 minutes, 1 hour, 8 hours or whatever time you can spare for this very important effort to do whatever you can on this list of ideas to promote this campaign:

1. Send an email to every listserv you belong to, every friend on your email list, every support group you belong to, your case manager, your teachers, your local Arc, your fellow church-goers, EVERYONE you can think of - urging them to vote and post their comments.

2. Watch the site to see if we make it to the next round and then send another blast to everyone to get them back there.

3. Post a widget (available on the voting page itself) on your blog, Myspace, Facebook page or web site.

4. Spend a few minutes googling to find support groups you don't already know and ask them to do what I am asking you to do.

5. Join a NEW Internet support group and send this message there, too.

6. Join groups like Momslikeme.com and post it there.

Anything else you can think of......

Thanks,
Renee

Making Friends is Hard to Do

Parents of kids and adults with special needs know how difficult it is for our children to make friends. It is one of the most heart-breaking parts about watching your child grow and one of the most difficult to help our children overcome.

Author and special educator Rick Lavoie recently conducted a workshop to teach educators, PTA members and others just what it is like. He offered understanding, hope, and solutions as well.

Read more about what he did

The examples he used helped those who participated in the workshop to really experience what it must be like.

There are other resources that can also help you to help your child. First, make sure you are in contact with your local Arc and the Parent Training Information Center for your area. Both organizations sometimes offer workshops related to making friends.

A few other resources include:
Snapshots - Making Friends - produced by the FPG Child Development Institute at UNC Chapel
Hill.

An article from About.com : Top 6 Tips to Teach Social Skills and Help Kids Make Friends

A paper called Making Friends: Using Recreation Activities To Promote Friendship between Children with and without Disabilities.

Information from a study that was done on the subject.

It is also important to continue to educate everyone around you about what you are experiencing. Sometimes, the grief parents feel inside as we watch our children try to navigate the social world can cause us to be biased about what we believe is happening. There are many times when your child actually is having a good time and relating to friends when you don't know it.