The John P. Hussman Foundation, which supports research and training on communication strategies for people with autism, announced April 16 it would provide the Facilitated Communication Institute (FCI) of the Syracuse University School of Education a half million dollar grant.

‘It certainly strengthens our resource, for sure. So we’re pretty excited about it,’ said Marilyn Chadwick, the assistant director of the Facilitated Communication Institute (FCI).

The $500,000 came straight to SU. John Hussman, the founder, director and namesake of the foundation, contacted the FCI early last fall without any prior requirements.

‘He initiated the contact with us and said he was interested in giving us some money,’ Chadwick said.

The FCI is headed by Douglas Biklen, dean of the School of Education. The institute attempts to teach new methods of communication to both families of those with disabilities and professionals who will work with the families.

Facilitated communication begins with psychical communication, pointing at letters, words or typing. The hope is the person will move to more advanced forms of communication without an aide or prop, Chadwick said.

‘The goal of facilitated communication is people becoming much less dependent communicators,’ said Christine Ashby, a member of the FCI and an associate professor in the School of Education.

Hussman has a personal connection to the work of the FCI. His son has autism and makes use of facilitated communication, Chadwick explained. A recent report issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that autism strikes one in 150 children in America.

Chadwick maintained that facilitated communication can be used to combat more than autism.

‘Our method itself supports a lot of disabilities,’ Chadwick said.

The grant will be used in three different ways. Chadwick will manage the development of the program’s clinical ability to work with families and better develop those methods.

The money will also support research projects taking place both locally and nationwide, which will be managed by Ashby.

One project will look at people who are communicating at an increasingly independent level. Another will study the use of facilitated communication in the post-high school level and in the community at large.

The group will then analyze all of the research studies conducted on facilitated communication to determine where facilitated communication currently stands, Ashby said.

The goal of the research is ‘to keep looking at how people say what they need to say,’ Ashby said.

With the projects being conducted across the nation, Ashby hopes to build a network of those using facilitated communication. She is hoping such a network will help facilitated communication become a more valid method of interaction.

‘We’re just scratching the surface of what people with disabilities can do,’ Ashby said.

The money will also be used to fund a documentary on their work. Academy award-winning director, Gerardine Wurzburg, is set to create the film.

Wurzburg has collaborated with Biklen in the past. He served as an educational consultant on her Oscar-winning documentary ‘Educating Peter’ (1992) and co-produced the sequel ‘Graduating Peter’ (2002). Wurzburg was nominated for another Oscar in 2004 for Autism is a World, a documentary about a woman uses facilitated communication.

‘It is a continuation in many ways of the work we’ve already done,’ Wurzburg said.

Right now, Wurzburg is compiling the stories of the families the FCI will affect. She says she hopes to give autism a new face, focusing on adults with autism and how they are communicating on a broad scale.

‘It’s very much about the fact that people with autism are often to be perceived to be intelligent or not have competence,’ Wurzburg said. ‘I’m very excited. This is very much my lifework.’

[email protected]

Published on April 27, 2008 at 12:00 pm