A research project for special needs kids in Italy

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Hello all,
I'm back after a lot of time. Eventually I found a way to give an education to my 6 yo autistic son. He is doing fine and I have to thank you also for this.
I'm committed with autism and disability communities here in Italy, as I promised myself. There's a lot to do, I think my generation will not be enough for a real acknowledgement of the need to support disability rights ad advocacy.
I want today to support this project by a researchers team. This is unique in its kind in Italy and we need things like that, to build good practices for the future.

The project is named "educational energy" and is taking part in a funraising event for startups (edisonstart) connected with social network. One of the parameters for funding is achieve many votes from people. Here's the link:
http://www.edisonstart.it/idee/energia-educativa

I will translate for those that are not familiar with italian.
If you like it and want to vote, you can di it clicking on the heart-shaped button.

OUR IDEA
A child with a motor issue obtains a therapy based on scientific research findings. A child with a learning issue gets an education based on common sense. We want to bring to all special needs children the best education based on scientific research findings. We created for this reason tice centers, learning centers where children learn using innovative methodologies with scientific validation

GOALS AND BENEFICIARIES
We want to invest on applied research to find effective methodologies to empower special needs children learning (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, intellectual disability, autism). We want to turn research findings to methodologies for schools. We want to create "educational power stations" (the funding is supported by an energy production company) all over Italy, transforming young education professionals in smal businessman.

STRENGHTS
ENERGY: we bring in our country the stronger, clean and renewable energy: children's learning. BUSINESS: we are a private business that fights to improve state education. RESEARCH: we invest on research to make innovation everyday. REPLICABILITY: we use a scientific and organizational algorithm to replicate effects in different locations.

EXPECTED OUTCOMES
I don't know if I should write it because It can seem eccentric, but I don't want to lie. We expect to change the world. We will change it improving teaching and special needs kids education. We believe to create 6 new educational centers in 3 years, teaching to 2000 special needs kids and provide training to 100 teachers.

Do you some specifics of what you are doing? It's hard to understand what you are doing based on the description.

Hi btbnnyr,
I'm just supporting this researchers. They are researching about special education. That's a research topic that no one takes care of in Italy, even if it can seem odd to you.
The result is that we have our children in inclusive schools, but if they lag behind the have just baby-sitting and they don't learn to read and write. Teachers give up because they don't have appropriate tools.
I was told that it's useless teaching my son (he's 6 yo) to read and write because he will do nothing with this skills. I'm teaching him with researcher's help and he's doing fine.
I don't know if he learns with regular education, but with their methodologies it's easier for him.
Reading in italian is easier than in english, but he's reading single words and he progresses. But if I tell this to neuropsichiatrists, often I have a teasing laugh.
So, it is not only this research project I'm supporting, it's a cultural change.
They think, if his life will be in residential care, he doesn't need this effort to be taught.
I want to make my fellow citizens to understand that autistic kids worth it.

Kind of an interesting approach. However, I can't but wonder how you will manage to merge published autism research with best methods of education. IMO, autism research, which is based on poorly defined DSM labels, and that have had little to no progress in understanding autism / neurodiversity for decades, has zero relevance for educational programs. That's why we frequently find that the diagnosis itself has little relevance for educational interventions. Or maybe you want to support research on special educational programs related to neurodiversity?

I think there is a lot to be done on educational and coping interventions, but to develop these you need to understand neurodiversity from another perspective than from the perspective of neurotypicals and psychiatry. I have plans to involve in this area, and I actually know a few very good educators with AS/ADHD diagnosis that are already doing a good job in learning people how they work. The next logical step for these people is to suggest interventions, that then can be evaluated using scientific methods.

Thanks for clarifying, claudia, this sounds like good idear.

Reading and writing/typing are critical for non-verbal autistic children. I worked at nonprofit in US that does same thing and has similar goals including cultural change.

I am studying neuroscience/autistic brain/cognition, and also interested in developing educational approaches that work for autistic people.

// I can't but wonder how you will manage to merge published autism research with best methods of education.//
It's a goal for the researchers but it's still a long way. For example, they are developing methodologies to keep kid's attention, but they are not still related to autism, they are related to lack of attention, that's not only related to autism.
Play skills is another example, for something related with autism. This are the first attempts to help an autism specific issue and they are far from being perfect... I was surprised this weekend seeing my son plauing football with other kids, and he asked to play.

Attention is a good example of the poor knowledge. My guess is that most attention issues in autism and ADHD are related to motivation. So what we need to understand is the motivation profile, not the attention profile. The attention (or inattention) profile is easy to spot, but since the reason for inattention is usually motivation issues, which are much harder to figure out, there will be no useful output. Motivation needs to be created by having interesting things to do, and also requires not switching between topics too much. This is also related to special interests in autism, which is an example of extremely high motivation.