Julie Ames with Vicky Westra
Original air date: July 5, 2015
Vicky Westra of Artistas Café discusses Artistas Café’s Training & Employment Program, and the upcoming Artistas Development Center for individuals with disabilities.
Flyer (PDF): Artistas Development Center
Julie Ames with Ken Gibson and Sunny Hall of the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay
Original Air Date: June 28, 2015
Part I: Ken Gibson, Director of Marketing & Public Relations, and Sunny Hall, Vice President of Client Services explains the many ways the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay helps people in our area.
Call Us: Please call us with your questions for the counselors at the
Crisis Center of Tampa Bay by July 3rd. Our number is 813-816-2637.
Part II: We will be back with Part 2 on July 12th with the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay and the answers to your questions.
Guests: Sally DePalma of The One Roof Initiative and Allen Guy with special friends from the New Tampa Young Life Capernaum Ministries.
Julie Ames with Sally DePalma
Julie Ames, Special Needs Family Hour, Sally, Allen Guy and the Thursday Crew Ninjas! — with Julie Ames, Carmen Gonzalez Shank, Matthew Brown, Sally Guess DePalma, Arnaldo Rivera, Kevin James Hodgins, Allen Guy and Kendra Holden at AM 860 The Answer
Allen Guy and the Thursday Crew Ninjas! — with Arnaldo Rivera, Kendra Holden and Allen Guy at AM 860 The Answer.
Allen Guy and the Thursday Crew Ninjas! — with Matthew Brown, Carmen Gonzalez Shank, Kevin James Hodgins and Allen Guy at AM 860 The Answer
Click Here for Guardianship Part 1!
Part 2: Jay Hemness is back to answer Guardianship questions
Following Jay Hemness, on the same show, will be the Pepin Academies School Nurse, Diane McCurdy. Diane is an expert when it comes to helping special needs families and their children. Learn more about one of our Show Sponsors – Pepin Academies!
Jay Hemness and Julie Ames
Original Air Date: June 7, 2015
Part I: Jay Hemness Attorney at Law discussed the guardianship process for your special needs 18 year old child on the June 7th show. The podcast of the June 7th show is now available.
Call Jay: Listeners may call in their questions or comments for Jay on Sunday (June 7th) – Thursday morning 8am (June 11th), the phone number is 813-816-2637.
Part II: Jay Hemness will answer your questions Sunday Afternoon, June 14th, 1-2pm on 860 AM.
Denise Provenzano with Florida Diagnostic & Learning Resources Systems with the Hillsborough County School District (in the black and white) and Claudia Roberts a Parent Advocate (green outfit).
Original Air Date: May 31, 2015
Topics include:
Julie and the Parent Liaisons
On today’s show we talked about the Parent Liaison Project sponsored by Florida Diagnostic & Learning Resources System (FDLRS) – Parent Services.
To learn more about FDLRS-Parent Services Call
Debbie Valdes – Program Manager
(813) 837-7733
Debbie.Valdes@sdhc12.fl.us
Parent Services Voicemail
(813) 837-7732 (English)
(813) 837-7728 (Español)
For more information please listen to the corresponding show from May 17, 2015
Dear Bay Area Early Steps Families,
I am so honored to be your Family Resource Specialist (FRS). I have traveled down the road that you are on and have felt all the highs and lows that you might be experiencing.
I am a mommy of a beautiful little girl who was born with a bilateral severe-to-profound hearing loss. That means that sound has to be as loud as a lawnmower for her to hear it. Kiersta was born at 35.5 weeks and spent time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) for 13 days for suck, swallow, and breathe. When she was getting ready to be discharged, she was given the Newborn Hearing Screening and failed it 3 times. At 4 weeks, she was given an Auditory Brain Stem Response (ABR) and that was when we were given the confirmation that she was not hearing our voices say “I love you”. Brian, Kiersta’s daddy, and I instantly went into parent advocate roles. We started researching cochlear implants and knew that we wanted to give her the best options for listening and spoken language. Kiersta received her hearing aids at 4 months, her first cochlear implant at 16 months, and her second cochlear at 3 years. She is completely oral and uses her words to communicate with her family and friends. Kiersta is truly a product of early intervention. I am so grateful that a program like Early Steps was able to provide her with the support and services that she needed.
I would like to extend my encouragement to you as you take this journey with your child. I know it is not always going to be easy and I am here to provide your family with support. I want to offer you options so that you can make the best informed decisions for your child and family. Please feel free to contact me at any time.
With warmest regards,
Alex DeMoline
Interested in attending a conference, workshop, or playgroup?
Early Steps has a unique scholarship program for families to participate in activities that enhance family involvement and education.
Empower yourself!
USF Bay Area Early Steps Program
Division of General Pediatrics
Family Resource Specialist
13101 Bruce B. Downs Blvd.
Tampa, FL 33612
Office: 813-974-0674
Toll Free: 1-866-549-1740
Fax: 813-558-1343
ademolin@health.usf.edu
For more information contact:
This poem was very helpful to me. I refer to it frequently on my show as a way to describe what it is like to raise children with disabilities. Please enjoy the poem below.
Written by Emily Perl Kingsley
I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…
When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum, the Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”
“Holland?!” you say. “What do you mean, Holland?” I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.
But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to some horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.
So you must go out and buy a new guidebook. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”
The pain of that will never, ever, go away, because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.
But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.
Julie’s Story/Child Find & Early Childhood Council
The first show of Special Needs Family Hour launched successfully on Mother’s Day on talk radio station 860AM. You can listen to the show online below:
Child Find: A service within the Florida Diagnostic and Learning Resources System (FDLRS). Child Find, a free service, assists parents and schools with the early identification of children, birth through age 21, who have, or are at risk of, a disability. Every child grows mentally and physically at his or her own pace. However, some children experience disabilities that can hinder their potential progress. Child Find offers parents services to help in identifying these children.
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