I said this last year that at school, February is the
toughest month of the year in terms of mental health challenges. With that in mind, let me share with you the
status of three resources.
First, CanFASD has just released its first online course to
the public, free of charge. https://estore.canfasd.ca/foundations-in-fasd
This 60-minute
course provides all participants with a certificate of completion and is called
Foundations. This course is designed to
educate the public who may have no knowledge or misinformation pertaining to
FASD. It is written at the standard
reading level of the public and uses lots of fabulous graphics and videos
within the instruction. CanFASD has also
provided a postcard that can be shared with anyone you think may benefit from
taking this course. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D7VPWuYn5y8BpoSenOnTansc7wKuTszd/view?usp=sharing
CanFASD brought
together all their experts in collaboration to create this course and the
quality absolutely shines through. It is
completely evidence-based, uses the entire CanFASD research library and hired
the best of the best in their fields to contribute. They just completed alpha and beta testing
and received at 4.7 out of 5.0 rating after the beta testing. They are still accumulating feedback data so
please take the course and do the feedback survey at the end. They will use your feedback to continue
improving the course. If you weren’t
aware, Canada is the world leader today in FASD research and awareness. POPFASD from the States, RRFASD from
Australia, and sites from England and France are the other main organizations
but CanFASD’s library of research is beyond all of them. Please share the postcard with every single
person working with you and/or your child.
The site is using research and data that has been released in the past
couple months. This course is completely
current.
Second, the Rural FASD Support Network has been invited to
present to several local organizations over the next couple months and wanted
to share a sneak peek. From an
educational standpoint, we know 16% of children have sensory processing
challenges according to the STAR institute.
https://www.spdstar.org/ We also know 90% of children with FASD will have mental health
challenges and 75% of their caregivers will have a mental health breakdown
within their lifetime according to CanFASD research.
The evidence-based approach from the STAR Institute to supporting mental
health and sensory processing is as follows:
1) figure out the triggers that is creating the
dysregulation and remove them.
2) establish a safe place and safe person who the individual will implicitly trust
in all situations. You accomplish this
through focused relationship.
3) once the individual is consistently regulated through these two steps,
introduce them back into community with peers.
This method is used in several different applications as
well. As a math teacher, I identify
first where the math gaps are and teach those basic skills. Next, I directly teach the new concept to the
class modeling what they need to know.
Last, they get into their small groups and start working on the problems
together. http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/teachers/teacher_guide_math_en.pdf
As a support group leader, we
identified the needs of a group and fill them first. Meet monthly, provide child care, provide
community resource leads, and overcome time and money challenges. We then specifically teach strategies for
particular issues using expert presenters and direct support when needed and
finally we create mentorships and friendships within the group. I could go on to lots of other examples, but
I suspect you get the idea.
