By John VoketDisabled Are TargetsNo Standard Response

For Catherine Hogan, founder of the Social Communication Foundation, the tragic shootings at Columbine, Colo., in 1999 shook her "to the core," and launched a journey that brought her to develop a new and successful program for reducing the effects of harm in learning environments and identifying possible mental health indicators in schools.

The foundation is coming to Newtown to host a new reciprocal cross-peer social communication training group at Kevin's Community Center (KCC). The ten-week, fee-based program is scheduled to meet Wednesdays between February 10 and May 23.

Newtown High School students and Kevin's Community Center are welcoming young people with social communication challenges from Newtown and around the state. Facilitators from the foundation and former participants of its Beyond Differences Program will set the platform for this diverse group of communicators to learn from each other.

In an advance on the series, Ms Hogan said bringing socially challenged young people and their caring socially nonchallenged peers together to learn about each other's social language differences helps participants explore ways to bridge their communication challenges.

"We use a specially designed Inclusion Teaming Curriculum, incorporating current research, best social skill practices, and the principles of both Universal Design of Learning and neuroplasticity," Ms Hogan explained. "This focused peer-to-peer engagement, once basic social skills are in place, is a life-altering and potential-expanding experience for young people that adults alone cannot provide.

"You have to be in the room to see the shared interactions - they often go beyond the willingness to discover and engage that we see in adult teams," she added. "It is exciting."

Reciprocal cross-peer social communication opportunities are necessary, she said, to build confidence interacting with others and to develop communication skills that increase the chance for both success and relationships

"I met with Kevin's Clinic Director Mary Neilson who was wonderful. We sat, we met along with another member of my board and spoke with her and made plans for the course and possibly to try and write grants together," she said.

According to Ms Hogan, the shooters at Columbine were reportedly isolated, and a teacher noticed and commented on Eric Harris's gruesome writing. There was a suicide note at the time (now disputed) that blamed the killings on the treatment the shooters had received from other kids.

She acknowledges that there are contradictory accounts regarding the role of bullying and mental health for the shooters in relationship to their tragic decision. But as president of the Connecticut Association of School Social Workers from 1998 to 2002, Ms Hogan was exposed to a number of young people who she described as outliers.

As Ms Hogan explored bullying in schools between 1999 and 2009, she developed statistics showing that bullies targeted even young people with brain-based challenges in learning and social language. She said these vulnerable young people included those with depression, attention deficits, learning disabilities, or autism.

"More that 50 percent of school children with disabilities were targeted," she said. "So how could it be fair to send children, particularly vulnerable children, to school daily to be mistreated and for us to still be content with the answers that bullying is a right of passage and if you want to solve it, let the kids do it?"

Ms Hogan eventually began to label the behavior "peer abuse," and defined it as any emotional or physical behavior that demeans a child and affects that child's ability to maximize his or her personal potential in the learning environment.

"Imagine young people in school not being able to see a problem coming; not being able to respond quickly enough; not being able to read facial expressions; not being able to process unrelated put-downs, and having to endure misunderstanding and presumptions about their differences," she posed. "Imagine a child who dribbles the basketball awkwardly, runs on her toes, doesn't speak much, or often answers seemingly off topic; and having to endure the laughter of some peers as she or he pursues learning."

Over the last two decades, Ms Hogan has served as a member of the Bully Police, an organization of dedicated parents and professionals who had lost children from bullycide, and who were now advocating for bullying laws.

She also worked as a clinical supervisor at the Yale Child Study Center from 1994 to 2006; served on the Governor's Task Force on Bullying from 2001 to 2008; and the Coalition of Parent Advocates and Attorneys from 2004 to 2009, while working as an educational advocate for satisfactory agreements between parents and educators.

Despite all that experience and professional development, Ms Hogan still kept coming around to the fact that educators and clinicians have no standard response to peer abuse to offer a child that is satisfactory to educational staff across a district or across the state.

So in September 2009, Ms Hogan launched the Social Communication Foundation to address the social communication learning needs of young people, regardless of income and diagnosis, by tapping the caring capacity of nonchallenged communicators who are ready and willing to jump in and co-learn.

"Participants work together in groups most appropriate to their social interaction achievement levels and assessment of social cognition towards others is included as part of the application with a highly qualified resource and referral team if needed," she said.

Two members of the foundation's team, who had been intricately involved in the Newtown community, recommended taking the next service group to Newtown.

"We had done groups in Westport, St Raphael's/Yale New Haven, and Notre Dame West Haven," Ms Hogan said. "The [challenges] of the Newtown school district, for children with brain-based social interaction challenges, were no different than any other school district. However, Newtown had a heightened capacity for caring about others - particularly their young people."

For more information, contact Janet Tanner at 860-402-9863 or Jodie Siwik Enriquez at 203-426-1052, or visit socialcommunicationfoundation.org. Financial aid is available.