Hello Learne and Anthony! Welcome! We certainly look forward to
your input.
Your questions are all good ones. As we appear to be still waiting
to hear from Fact Family (the nonprofit that has generously offered
to help us accept donations and award any scholarships). Their group
was looking into how to make donations very easy (by mail or
website). I haven't heard from Linda Andron in a few weeks, but
emailed her today. I will let all of you know an update as soon as I
do.
In the interim, I think our group should consider all the questions
that Learne and Anthony asked. I initially wanted to help start the
fund in order to help families obtain a consultant, because the
upcoming information system will be limited to those who have a
consultant (at least, that was the announcement at August's Annual
Meeting). However, I believe a worthy family should be able to use
the Scholarship whatever way they think it would be most helpful (I
imagine there are a lot of families sacrificing everything else so
they can pay for their consultant).
Any comments from our group would be greatly appreciated! I will
update everyone as soon as the Fact Family people contact me. Take
care, Jen

> Hi all
>
> We are an Australian couple who have a 5-year old son and we have
been doing RDI now
> for nearly 2 years. We started at stage 0 and are now stuck between
stage 3 & 4 using a US
> consultant. Basically this progress has meant that our family can
go out from our home
> now and socialise without everyone having a complete meltdown.
Patrick will also start
> Kindy next year without an aid. We are so grateful for having found
out about RDI before
> we had started any other therapies.
>
> In Australia there is NIL funding available for a program or other
programs for that matter.
> You can only receive services if you go through government channels
and these services
> are inadequate to say the least, they tend to keep our kids
autistic and have long waiting
> lists.
>
> We know that it has been mentioned that the RDI Scholarship fund
will include
> international families but we wanted to know on what terms this
would be. I have heard
> that your funding wont include people being able to attend the
seminar or parent
> training run by the connections centre in the US, Why not?
>
> Our hope is that the funding will cover and include airfare to the
US to attend the
> valuable parent training (which connections centre so strongly
advises and we agree), First
> RDA's carried at the Connections centre and then follow on
consultants fees (either
> consultants based in OZ or US). What will be the acceptance
guidelines for families? How
> will you decide who gets funding and who doesn't? How long will the
funding be available
> for, will this be a capped amount.
>
>
> Thanks
> Learne & Anthony
>