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AAAP to Build First Residential Community for Adults with Autism

9 Mar

It is the dream of every parent of children with autism to settle their loved ones, when they become adults, in a safe and secure environment that will provide long-term care for persons with autism. With this vision in mind, The Association for Adults with Autism, Philippines (AAAP) came up with a flagship project, A Special Place, the first residential community in the country to care for these persons with special needs.

To realize this project, AAAP featured paintings by adults with autism at the Reading Room of Filipinas Heritage Library in Makati City last February 20 for a silent auction. Young artists Matthew Aragon, Vico Cham and Andrei Macapagal donated their artworks for the cause.

Corporate representatives and guests attended the art auction in support to AAAP’s A Special Place project. Broadcast journalist Karen Davila and other advocates for the care of persons with autism, were among the speakers at the launch.

The fundraising event was held to help construct A Special Place which will initially consist of six individual homes located within the same campus with six residents and house parents assigned per unit. The residents will receive full supervision and care. The facility will be built in a location south of Manila, with a cool environment that will provide “nature therapy”, yet still relatively accessible to basic services.

“Our focus now is to raise enough funds to make this dream a reality especially now that more and more Filipinos are diagnosed with autism. We thought of A Special Place because, as parents, it is a reality we face that we will eventually grow old and, thus, have to ensure the future of our offspring who have autism. We’ll not always be here for our children and we believe it’s high time to have a facility here in the country that specifically caters to the needs of adults with autism, a place where they can enjoy a secure, independent, and comfortable life,” said Lirio Sobreviñas-Covey, President of AAAP. Covey, a Professor of Clinical Psychology and Senior Research Scientist at Columbia University in New York, is a mother to 33-year old Mikey, an adult with autism who now lives in a residential community in New York.

For more information on A Special Place and AAAP, contact Carissa Villacorta at +639175955480 or send an email to adultautismphil.

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The Association for Adults with Autism, Philippines (AAAP) is a non-profit group conceived and established by parents of persons with autism. The association aims to provide sustained enrichment opportunities and long-term care to these individuals as well as offer means to achieve personal growth, social interaction, and a cooperative life among their peers. Visit https://adultautismphil.wordpress.com for more details.

Figure 1 (L-R) Enviro Board Managing Director Joshua Mosshart, Karen Davila, Enviro Board Co-Chairman Glenn Camp, and Gloria Caoile.

Figure 2 Vico Cham draws Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chair Patricia Licuanan.

Figure 3 AAAP President Lirio Covey presented the concept of A Special Place.

Building a special place for adults with autism

2 Mar

by Yolanda A. Punzalan
Photos by Mario Ignacio

Very soon, a special place for special people will rise somewhere in Batangas.

It will be the answer to the agony of parents with children with autism: who will take care of them when we are no longer around?

The Association for Adults with Autism, Philippines (AAAP) hopes to address this concern through its flagship project “A Special Place,” the country’s first residential community for adults with autism, launched atFilipinas Heritage Library last Feb. 20.

Autism is a neurological disorder that stunts a person’s mental, social and behavioral growth.

In her article in the Philippine Star, AAAP President Dr. Lirio Sobrevinas-Covey said autism is a complex behavioral syndrome that first manifests during early childhood, usually between the ages of one and four years old.

Covey is a clinical psychologist, senior research scientist and professor at Columbia University, New York. Her 33-year-old son, Mikey, has lived in the Armonk facility for Persons with Autism (PWA) in New York for the past 10 years.

Covey further wrote, “There are no reliable estimates of the worldwide prevalence of autism. What is generally recognized is that the numbers of children with autism have dramatically increased worldwide, accounted for mostly by improvements in the ability of clinicians to identify the relevant symptoms. In the United States, the prevalence of autism is estimated today at one out of every 110 children, with the ratio higher for males.

In the Philippines, Covey said recent estimates indicate that there are about 1,000,000 Filipinos who fall in the broad category of autistic spectrum disorders.

Kicking off the launching of “A Special Place” was a silent auction of art paintings in oils, pastels and computer graphics by persons with autism.

It featured art works of Andrei Macapagal, the 40-year-old firstborn of Arthur and Mariter Jalandoni-Macapagal; Matthew F. Aragon, 15-year-old son of lawyer Rosalio Aragon and wife Mimi; and Victor Francisco Cham, 20-year-old son of architects Victor G. Cham Jr. and Cathy Candelaria-Cham.

The dream project of building a safe, nurturing place for adults with autism began to take shape through a thesis of Cham’s son Carlos, who earned a degree in architecture from the University of Sto. Tomas (UST).

His thesis was on building individual homes for PWA in a campus, patterned after homes for persons with autism in New York, Europe, Canada and the Middle East.

When Carlos was introduced Covey, the thesis got the chance to be transformed into a living reality.

Covey discussed the association’s master plan, showing how the evergreen community will benefit not only its residents who are 18 years old and above, but also their families and the entire society as well.

“We will start slowly and small beginning with three homes,” she said. “We are finalizing the purchase of a two-hectare lot outside Lipa City from the Maralit family.”

Covey added that the search for the site that would be home to Filipino adults with autism took into consideration its “proximity to nature, not being flood-prone, and accessibility to urban amenities and hospitals.”

With a P30-million budget, the residential community for adults with autism will be complete with house parents and facilities for education, work, therapy and recreation, among other things.

One of the project’s supporters is award-winning broadcast journalist Karen Davila, who publicly confessed her anger and frustration when her son David was diagnosed with autism when he was 3 ½ years old.

She said she realized that was why he never called her mom, never looked at her in the eye, and why he was always screaming and rolling on the floor.

Davila recalled she at first refused to have a support group, opting to fight her battle as a special parent singlehandedly. Aside from conducting an extensive research on autism, she provided David occupational and speech therapy, biomedication,

A Special Place for Adults with Autism Launched

2 Mar

“As a parent, you will do everything yo ucan to make your child independent,” broadcast journalist Karen Davila shared during the launch of A Special Place, a project of the Association for Adults with Autism Philippines (AAAP) at the Filipinas Heritage Library.

Davila, who gave the opening remarks during the launch, talked about her son, David, diagnosed at the age of three to have Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), or having some behaviors seen in autism but not necessarily having Autistic Disorder. David, now 10 years old, celebrated his birthday on the same day of the launch.

“When you have a child with autism, parenting becomes a whole new ballgame,” Davila added, to which many parents of persons with autism agreed. Davila learned of AAAP’s initiative to build A Special Place, a residential community for individuals with autism through the organization’s president, Dr. Lirio Sobrevinas Covey, when they met in the US.

Dr. Covey is a psychologist and professor of Clinical Psychology and a Research Scientist at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York. She is also parent to 33 year-old Mikey, who is living in a group home in Westchester, New York for 10 years.

“Before AAAP, we were strangers to one another. We came together in AAAP, have become caring friends, bonded by a common cause – you might say – fear. What will happen to our charges when their parents and caregivers are no longer here? Our goal is to build a nurturing environment where these adults with autism can grow – safely, productively, with their peers, and independently of their original families,” says Dr. Covey.

AAAP Vice President Catherine Cham was a proud parent during the launch as his son Vico, 19 years old, sketched on-the-spot individuals who graced the event, including Davila, while Macky Palomares played the piano. Vico’s older brother, Carlos, a graduating architect student, presented his perspectives of A Special Place and its amenities as part of the program. “This is a labor of love,” remarks Carlos Cham.

The organization has identified a 1-2 hectare property outside of Lipa City. “The site fulfils the basic criteria that we had planned for a cool environment, not necessitating air conditioning, not flood-prone, and close to a metropolitan area which would have facilities for medical care, training centers for staff and residents who can work outside of the group home premises,” according to Dr. Covey.

A Special Place will consist of six individual houses, one building for staff and visitors’ quarters, and another building for administration, the library, and medical facilities. Residents will be adults who receive the diagnosis of autism, as certified by a clinical team composed of a neurologist, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist.

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