Special Needs and Primary

[Emmaline]

Hey, everyone. I need some thoughts/ideas and am wondering if any of you have something similar in your ward.

I'm currently in the Primary presidency, and during our last meeting, we discussed opening up some sort of support group/organization for parents who have children with special needs. There are a lot of children in our ward who fall under this category (developmental disorders including Autism, Asperger's, etc). Because of our city location and the many services provided to care for these children, we have a higher population of children with special needs. I am currently in this field as well as a behavioral interventionist. I believe this is why it was brought up, but I need some ideas.

Obviously many parents in the ward may be sensitive, so it would be likely we make it an open invitation in the announcements or something. I'm trying to grasp at ideas here, so I'm just curious if you have anything similar going in within your ward, or may have some ideas? I think this opportunity can help parents in the church not feel so ... left out?

If you have an opinions, please share!

[rayhale]

One thing to keep in mind, if there are adult aged people with disabilities, like autism, it is recommended to not to treat them like children, on my mission, there were several areas, where there was a 20-30-something mentally disabled adult, still going to young men’s/women’s, since I don’t know anything about these situations, I don’t know if they were right, or wrong, but in my town, I read an obituary of a mentally disabled person, in it, it stated that he went to a ‘special needs’ ward, it was ran by, and taught by mental professionals, with the blessing of the local stake president, I thought that was cool.