SPECIAL BUDDIES

I just opened up a new ministry environmental area. I had several kids that were diagnosed within the Autistic Spectrum and some kids with Asperger syndrome. It made it very difficult for both the kids and parents to participate in church. I also had several kids that were undiagnosed yet we highly suspected that some type of condition existed. We also had a few parents that were unwilling to acknowledge any problem existed and these were the most difficult to try to minister to.

Here are few things we did.

1. I consulted with a professor from Portland State and a special needs teacher that both attend my church. Very few books dealt with these issues at a ministry level.
2. We created a special environment for special needs kids. We call it “The Cabin”. It has low lighting, soft music, tactile objects and unique furnishings from IKEA like the cocoon chair, beanbags, crawl tunnel, etc. Total cost was around $800.
3. We put a group of volunteers through special training that the above listed experts conducted to help our volunteers understand and work through ministry with these kids. We also encouraged all other teachers/leaders to audit this class to gain greater insight to this challenge. Many did just that.
4. Our intent is to always strive to have any of our ‘special needs’ kids stay mainstream in ministry where possible. An example is when a child can function in a Sunday School class but cannot go to kid’s church due to issues like volume, lights, media distractions, etc. Therefore, this child goes to Sunday School class and then reports to The Cabin during second service.
5. We recruited and trained strategic volunteers called “Special Buddies” that are able to accompany a special needs child to their mainstream class or work more one-on-one with them in The Cabin if needed.
6. Only children that have been screened by an evaluator (people listed in bullet point #1) and have a completed application turned in by the parent(s) are allowed to utilize the program. The reason for this is that mainstream teachers thought this new area was going to be a great way to outsource their 'challenging kids' that did not meet a special needs category.
7. I established the initial Special Buddy/child rotational schedule. We made it the responsibility of the parent and the volunteers to coordinate ongoing coverage in The Cabin. We wanted to encourage their relationship to have plenty of communication between them and work out details if the child would be absent or the volunteer was unavailable.

So far, it has been a huge success. Both parents and volunteers are doing very will with the program. We were taken by surprise at the number of folks who signed up for this ministry. About half of them were auditing the class but enough were there to be ongoing Special Buddies.

One last thing we had to stress was that the parents of our special needs kids not advertise in their unique Autistic and Asperger networks about this. The result would have been over 30 new families showing up with their kids and we would not be readily staffed or able to accommodate them. Eventually, it is our hope that this would change.

It is my prayer that you will find this helpful if you minister to, or have a child dealing with this subject matter.