Working For Autism Spectrum Children—

Newtown Neighbor Vying To Be America’s ‘Smart Cookie’

By John Voket

What do you call the mother of an autistic child who gets so frustrated with the public education system that she opens her own academy for autism spectrum children? If your answer is “a smart cookie,” then perhaps you would like to support a fellow Newtown neighbor who is locked in a five-way race to become America’s next “Smart Cookie.”

Newtown resident Suzanne Letso, the executive director and co-founder of the Connecticut Center for Child Development (CCCD) and its subsidiary, The Institute for Educational Planning, is one of five women in the United States that has been nominated by Cookie Magazine for the 2007 Smart Cookie Award. The new family lifestyle magazine from the publishers of Bon Appetite is honoring women who have made a difference for others, and the world a better place because of their efforts.

The winner of the Smart Cookie Award will also receive a $5,000 donation to the charity of her choice.

Ms Letso co-founded the Connecticut Center for Child Development ten years ago when she was faced with her own son’s autism, and the lack of meaningful education and support in the public school arena. Instead of sitting back and waiting for direction, she took the reins and began the first school in Connecticut that used evidence-based learning principals know as applied behavior analysis.

She and her husband Roger, who serves as CFO for the center, are in the process of designing a new facility that will more than triple the space the organization currently occupies on Bridgeport Avenue in Milford.

During a visit with The Newtown Bee, Ms Letso described the difficult times she and her husband faced not only attempting to get their son the educational support he seemed to need, but even getting an appropriate diagnosis to confirm the couple’s suspicions that Tyler might be autistic.

“Tyler wasn’t diagnosed until he was almost 4,” she recalled. “My pediatrician at the time didn’t know a lot about autism. And essentially I was told my son was fine, and I was the one with the problem.”

After being accused of being “an overachieving yuppie mom with a desire for a perfect child” with no reason to be concerned that her 4-year-old was not talking, she became determined to develop services for children with autism that would be available for children across Connecticut.

“We took the Field of Dreams approach — if you build it they will come. And at a certain point we didn’t have a building…we didn’t have a staff, yet we said we are going to open a school in September,” she said.

Thanks to the goodwill of the Trinity Baptist Church in Fairfield, which rented their basement classroom to Ms Letso, 13 children became the first CCCD class. But it was not more than a few weeks later that she determined the children and her unique program needed a home of its own.

“We started a capital campaign and it took quite awhile to raise enough money, but we finally located the space we are in now,” she said. “We had to displace a bunch of spiders in a building that had been vacant for years, but it has served us up to this point.”

A Flexible Program

She describes the program at CCCD as “more flexible than most.”

“Given the unique needs of children with autism, we look at both the unique needs of the child from a curriculum standpoint, but we also have to look at teaching them things that aren’t part of a traditional curriculum.”

These special skill sessions may involve teaching a child how to cut their nails, how to tolerate going to the dentist or barber, even how to stay beside their parents when they are shopping at the grocery store.

“We look at things from the perspective of how a child’s autism affects the entire family’s ability to participate in the community, and to participate in their home life,” Ms Letso said. “We want to look toward adulthood and ask ourselves what this child is going to need from others. Then that becomes fair game as a learning objective to help them become as independent as possible.”

The program at CCCD serves as both a supplemental curriculum for school districts who pay for an out-of-district placement for their autistic special needs students, and as a standalone academy providing 100 percent of the comprehensive educational and life skill training into adulthood.

Students may remain at the school into their 20s, and the youngest student in the current program is just eight months old.

“We take students from all over Connecticut,” she said. “But we have an outreach program that can supplement the birth to 3 program for the very young, and our 22-year-old student is out in the community working at a job site and attending another school. We are still working with his family, his other school, and other potential employers.”

The CCCD also provides wraparound services, some at the center until 6:30 in the evening, and others in their homes after school. To address the increasing needs of their existing families and provide space to accommodate the many others seeking an alternative for their own autistic children, the Letsos are engaged in an ambitious capital campaign to build a new facility that will increase the center’s space from 10,000 to more than 35,000 square feet.

If Ms Letso wins the Smart Cookie Award, she said the $5,000 donation will be used to help purchase playground equipment at the center’s planned facility in Milford. To vote for Ms Letso to receive the Smart Cookie Award, go to www.cookiemag.com and click on the “Smart Cookie” button.

The deadline for on-line voting is February 6.

While Ms Letso said it would be great to get national recognition for her cause, she is focusing on her current students and the future of the center and its unique approach to educating young people who, until recently, were faced with a lifetime of supportive care in a home or institutional setting.

“We just believe that if you want to be able to impact learning to the greatest extent possible, there is a great body of research out there pointing to positive reinforcement as a way to affect meaningful change,” Ms Letso said. “It’s the most effective and long-lasting way to teach people as many skills as possible as quickly as possible, and we’re going to keep on doing that as long as we can in whatever space we can afford.”

To learn more about the CCCD, visit www.CCCDinc.org.