Virginia Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities

This project was created to inform nursing students of cleft lip and palate care, provide an overview of the needs of babies with cleft lip and palate, and describe basic feeding methods. This video was shown to Longwood's nursing students, and created with collaboration with the nursing professors and department. I created this resource in order to equip future nurses to understand and effectively deal with cleft lip and palate babies as they work in a diverse and fast-paced environment. 

This project was created to inform nursing students of cleft lip and palate care, provide an overview of the needs of babies with cleft lip and palate, and describe basic feeding methods. This video was shown to Longwood's nursing students, and created with collaboration with the nursing professors and department. I created this resource in order to equip future nurses to understand and effectively deal with cleft lip and palate babies as they work in a diverse and fast-paced environment. 

Our names our Alicia Henigan and Eileen Savinelli, we are currently the VCU/CHoR Pediatric Physical Therapy Residents for 2022-2023. We decided to collaborate on our leadership project because together we noticed a lack of resources for physical and mental health of the parents and caregivers of children with disabilities. We created a website called Mindful Caregiving in order to create a place that parents or caregivers can go to and find videos, links, articles, or support resources that are aimed at their own mental health, physical health, and overall wellbeing. There is evidence and literature to demonstrate the decreased overall health of these individuals as well as the impact the parents' health can play on the child. Our goal is to provide this resource to families of patients we work with as well as eventually have this site be a live document where parents, therapists, or other healthcare professionals can add additional resources.

https://henigan.wixsite.com/exercise4caregivers

My leadership project is called the Adventure Access Project. The goal of my project was to provide information to children with disabilities and their families about outdoor recreation opportunities. I hope that the information provided on my website will help to mitigate the barriers facing families who want to do things outside, but their child with a disability has considerations that might make that challenging. Additionally, I collaborated with Erin Henshaw to include her data on Inclusive Summer Camps as a page on my website.

Link to my website:

https://adventureaccess.wixsite.com/the-adventure-access

Early Signs of Autism: A QR Code brochure for staff at Early Learning Preschool in Henrico County as well as for parents who come through our program. In addition, I will use this brochure during a potential professional development for my staff during our summer professional development time. I decided to create a resource brochure because as a coach in Early Learning Preschool there has been a rise in students who come through the program showing signs of autism. There is a lack of knowledge on how to teach and support students with autism.  Oftentimes our general education preschool classrooms are the first place some of these students who show early signs of autism, step foot in. Unfortunately, as a result of a lack of knowledge and support for our teachers, we are seeing teacher burnout and students who show early signs of autism are not getting the appropriate support. In addition, these students are receiving negative first impressions into education. I hope that by providing awareness to my staff, then they will be better equipped to support a diverse group of learners. I hope that all students we serve are met where they are at and begin to fall in love with education. I hope that my staff will become excited about rethinking how they run their classroom and find themselves being open to the several different learners that can come through their doors.  I hope to also provide resources and awareness to parents that come through our program on identifying their child’s development milestones and other steps to help bring awareness to identifying early signs of autism in children if applicable. 

For my leadership project I wanted to focus on caregivers for those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) specifically in a psychiatric setting. I created a questionnaire to identify potential stressors of caregivers and also understand their perception regarding safety in order to provide optimal care. I also ask them to list their top 5 techniques for self-care in order to find commonalities and differences to share with the rest of the staff. The goal of this project is to present the data to management to possibly address change. 

My name is Erin Henshaw and my capstone project is entitled: Inclusive Virginia Summer Camps.  

I researched inclusivity and access that summer camps may offer and emailed a survey to over 40 Virginia camps to determine which aspects they accommodate. I chose this project because I have worked in camps and non-traditional education my entire life, and I saw a great need for more camp inclusivity while working at Child Protective Services as part of my MSW. I also collaborated with fellow LEND student, Brianne Bannister, to include her research and support for inclusive adventures, such as hiking. I hope that my project will help families find more access to life-bettering programs at camp, in nature, and in community. I created an interactive map with my findings, and will continue to accept new entries until the end of this year. 

Inclusive Camps Survey (please feel free to share): https://forms.gle/h9RPiCqYgzFLQrYn8 

Inclusive Summer Camps Map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1dU5PqgiBSDYKM5xGQf5WK_0ARYflaSY&usp=sharing 

Adventure Access Project: https://adventureaccess.wixsite.com/the-adventure-access 

My name is Grace Rice, and I am graduating this May with my Masters in Social Work. My presentation is titled “Models of disability Training,” which introduces participants to the key concepts of different models of disability including: the medical model, social model, minority group model, moral model, and the human variations model of disability. To help illustrate how the models have a real impact on the lives of individuals with disabilities, the training then applies each model to a case study of a sixteen year old boy who has a developmental disability. I hope that this training will help to broaden future practitioners' definition of disability, and give families of children with disabilities  various ways to view developmental disabilities. 

Attached is the case study word document and the prezi training link. https://prezi.com/view/8fURmAYQrYPfHCH1xuT4/

Case Study: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sXF8LQZooUEqyPPNpk9NLI0NJpbQcRmYdkmXZ9NhzyY/edit?usp=share_link 

For my leadership project, I compiled resources on developmental disabilities for child welfare workers in Virginia. These resources supported VCU’s School of Social Work’s Panel “Developmental Disability and Child Welfare: What You Need to Know.” I choose this project after Dr. Bogenschutz expressed a need for these resources. My experience as a LEND trainee helped me develop this resource on topics including developmental disabilities basics, person-first language, identify-first language, trauma-informed care, early identification, early interventions, school intervention, and transitions. I hope this resource will help child welfare workers provide support to children with developmental disabilities. 

For our leadership project, we planned an event called 22q at the Zoo that aims to raise awareness surrounding 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. We chose this project because it is an important way to raise awareness about a common genetic condition that many people may not know about. It also is a great way for families that have similar experiences to connect and socialize and also a fun day for the children with face painting, crafts, and exploring all that the zoo has to offer. The event will take place at the Metro Richmond Zoo from 10am-2pm. Pizza, snacks, and drinks will be provided and goodie bags for the kids to take home! The leadership responsibilities for the event were shared between the two trainees and included: coordinating with the zoo manager, reaching out to organizations to secure funding, ordering materials for the event, recruiting volunteers, creating promotional materials and advertising the event and more. 

Hello! My name is Heather Guthrie, and I am a student in VCU’s Entry-Level Occupational Therapy Doctorate Program. My leadership project is titled “Promoting the Education & Use of American Sign Language for Health Professionals.” I chose this project because since graduating high school in 2018, I have been working closely with children with neurodevelopmental disabilities who are nonspeaking and utilize sign language to communicate. Through VCU’s Coalition of Occupational Therapy Advocates for Diversity (COTAD), I have had the unique opportunity of jumpstarting and running “lunch and learns” that revolve around American Sign Language, Deaf Culture, the Deaf Community, and how all of this information relates to health professionals and providing services for children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families. This leadership project impacts children with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families because emerging professionals will be able to take this knowledge into their practices, being equipped to communicate with their clients using basic signs and understand the importance of sign language as a means of giving individuals a voice.

For my Leadership project, I created a guide for parents/caregivers who suspect their child has a disability or has recently been diagnosed with a disability. I chose this project because, as a mom of a child with disabilities, I was overwhelmed when my son was first diagnosed with Autism. I didn’t know where to start, and internet searches give you an overwhelming amount of information. During this time, I felt very new and alone, and I always wished there was an easy-to-understand guide that laid out the steps to receive services. When I decided to do this project with the help of the VCU CFI team, I found the same overwhelming amount of information. Some websites had a great wealth of information, but the format was difficult to read. Thus for my project, I chose to create it in plain English to be accessible to minority families where English is a second language. I hope this guide will ease the way for families just beginning their path of learning to live with a disability.

My name is Spencer West (physical therapy class of 2023), and my leadership project involved adaptive sports and recreation in physical therapist education. I chose this project because I recognized a space to incorporate adaptive fitness for children and adults with disabilities within our curriculum. I utilized connections within the VCU DPT program and Sportable to help plan and execute an adaptive sports lab and lunch-and-learn for second year physical therapy students in the Spring of 2022. I hope this project will help foster a connection between the physical therapy department and Sportable, as well as educate future therapists about more resources for their patients to participate in their communities.