Should there be a Justin Alert?
August 26, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Back in June, 7-year-old Benjy Heil was found in Ten Mile Creek, less than a mile from his house in Saratoga, Wisconsin; he was last seen playing in the basement. Rescuers searched for five days before finding him on June 19th. Last week, 11-year-old Justin Menezes of Northampton, PA, was missing for 13 hours before he was found unharmed.
Sadly, such reports of autistic children missing seem all too frequent. The August 26th Morning Call asks if an “Amber Alert“—first created in Texas in 1996 after 1996 after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was abducted and murdered—should be issued when autistic children are missing? Should there be a “Justin Alert”?
I dont live in the US but UK. I have never heard of autisc children going missing like this. As someone who has a autistic sibling greater care needs to be taken in their care/welfare. If such occurancies take place regularly then such an alert system needs to be in place. Not all with autism can take care of themselves.
I am very glad those two boys turned up safe.
We have “Amber alerts” here with the announcement that the child has autism. The rest of the picture is that a child with autism might not react to search and rescue the same way that a typical kid might. One little boy unfortunately died because rather than running towards the search party or returning their calls, was frightened and ran further into the wilderness.
I favor the idea of having specialized training for police, sheriff and search and rescue departments for special needs lost child alerts (and regular interactions with folks on the spectrum and other special needs).
I also favor the idea of communities purchasing and collaborating with special needs agencies and organizations for specialized location services, such as Project Lifesaver, http://www.projectlifesaver.org/site/
I believe that the difference in locating time is in the order of minutes vs. hours, which can be a life or death difference, not only for those with autism or developmental disabilities, but those who wander due to Alzheimer’s.
There are also the purchase-yourself homing devices, http://www.ion-kids.com/
Special training is essential. I’d like to think that our local law enforcement is getting the training they need to deal with increasing numbers of people with autism. The truth is, they’re not.
I would love love love for something like that to be in place, but I’m not sure that these incidents happen frequently enough for a legislative body to take action on it. The first senator who’s child or grandchild goes missing is the first you’ll probably hear of legislation like this being put into action.
We’ve considered getting alarms for all of our house’s external doors. And we’ve been meaning to take our boy down to the local police station and get him finger-printed and seeing if they have any policies for children who are prone to running away for no discernible reason. We figure it’s probably good practice for any autism parent.
Charlie has done a great job this year learning to stay in the front yard—-not that I’m not out there. He’s often pacing and humming on the lawn and I’m glad to hear his voice.
Back in June I heard a really good presentation about older kids and issues by a well-known autism consultant: She brought up the subject of, many kids don’t even know they are lost.
I think that the case that location tools are cost-efficient and multipurpose (aged and special needs) could be made. It’s the cost analysis of initial outlay and upkeep vs. the considerable cost of many people/law enforcement trying to locate by eye (not to mention the potential cost in life). From what I have seen, it could be on a per community basis.
In re: the policing aspect, Dennis Debbault gives lectures and training. Our state ASA and local autism organization collaborated (and lobbied the police chiefs and sheriffs) to have these trainings done in the 3 major metro areas of the state). The feedback so far is that it has helped in cutting down on the number of “unfortunate” incidents.
(I feel very lucky at this time that our daughter reliably stays in the yard, but it took some teaching. She had a stint of eloping a couple years back and it was breath-taking scary how fast she could get away from the house. We had already checked in with the neighbors and given them flyers on what to do if they saw her walking around the neighborhood sans parent or sister. All the doors have jingle bells on them still. Next step is to teach her to blow on a siren whistle if she can’t see dad on the hiking or bike trail.)