Pioneer Trek & Mansfield Autistic Centre

Brodie will be going on the Pioneer Hand Cart Trek organised by our stake. It will be at Creswick Regional Park, which is about a two hour drive from home. If you go to Google Maps and do a search you can go to street view and you will be able to see what the place looks like. I must admit that the pictures look like they were taken during summer so it looks rather brown and uninviting.

I can't wait for Brodie to go on the trek. It will do him the world of good to find out how hard the Pioneers had it. I know that he will learn a lot from it. He can't wait either. Brodie said he is looking forward to it.

I think Angus is excited too as he knows he will be getting a much needed break from Brodie! Not that we really want to get rid of him its just that Brodie can take up a lot of our resources I guess you could say.

We also had a phone call recently from Mansfield Autistic Centre. Mansfield is a short term placement residential school situated two hours from Melbourne. Mansfield also runs a Travelling Teacher program providing support to rural families. Anyway we got a phone call from them the other week and last week one of the travelling teachers came out to interview us. We had been on the waiting list since Brodie was officially diagnosed two years ago. So YAY we are now off the waiting list. We just need to wait to be assigned a travelling teacher who will work with us & the school. I did let the teacher know during our interview that I really would like the High School to have some sessions with her so that they can become more Asperger friendly. They really don't seem to be very Autism aware at that school. Not like I want them to be.
Mark said that I have taught them a lot since Brodie has been there but I am not sure that I have really.

I'm not sure how long we need to wait for a travelling teacher to be assigned to us but hopefully it wont be too long.

One of the programs that the Autistic centre runs is a residential program. Its where the kids can spend a whole school term there. They focus on areas like Communications skills, Social skills, Behaviour Management, Independent Living skills & Self help, Health & Well Being, Leisure and Recreation. There are no more than 12 children (it could be less) staying there for the term. I am not sure how many staff there are during the day but I know that there are two that sleep there at night to supervise the kids. It's awful expensive (around $1,000 for the term) but I would love for Brodie to attend for a term. It would give us all a much needed break and Brodie would hopefully learn so many things.

There are home weekends were he will be able to stay for about 4 days before heading back to the school. This happens every 3 weeks or so. I mentioned that I would like him to still attend Church meetings on Sundays. I don't know if I would need to organise for someone to come and collect him but I do remember being told that a staff member would most likely accompany Brodie on these outings.

That's about it for now I guess.

Oops almost forgot. Angus is so excited his soccer team made it into the finals. The first finals game is this weekend! Woohoo!!