Valentine's bill may speed up autism diagnoses

Earlier diagnoses for children affected by autistic disorders in Virginia may occur because of a bill sponsored by Del. Shannon Valentine, D-Lynchburg.

The nation’s fastest-growing developmental disorder needs a faster response in the state, Valentine told other legislators as she guided a bill to study the state’s autistic services to approval in the General Assembly this year.

Autism affects one baby in 150, and one out of 96 boys, Valentine said, citing information from the Centers for Disease Control.

Reasons for the rapid increase aren’t known, said Gena Barnhill of Lynchburg College, an assistant professor in special education.

Autistic children in Virginia often aren’t diagnosed until age 6, Valentine said. In other states, doctors and other professional people make the call as early as age 2.

The bill seeks to gather into a single source information from about 15 programs in Virginia that focus on autism-spectrum disorders, so that doctors and parents will have quicker access to the best practices for diagnosing, treating and managing the disability.

The four-year difference “can make a huge difference in these children’s lives” through earlier treatment and education methods, Valentine said.

Because of the two-year study, done by the state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, doctors and parents may gain an asset in Virginia that some other states have been providing for years.

Sid Hagan has two sons graduating from E.C. Glass High School this year. They have Asperger, a mild form of autism. He said a key to the boys’ educational success came about 12 years ago after the family moved from Newport News to Iowa.

In Newport News, “Everybody at that time was clueless about what was happening with them,” Hagan said. “We were told that basically they couldn’t learn and teachers asked my wife if she took illegal drugs while she was pregnant.

“In Iowa, we had been there about a month when the principal pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey, Sid, I think your kids are autistic.’

“They had had autism teams in all localities of Iowa since the late 1970s,” Hagan said.

“That’s important when you draw a parallel between other states and the commonwealth of Virginia,” he said.

Hagan, who until a few months ago led a support group for Lynchburg-area parents of autistic children, said Valentine’s bill may prove helpful.

“We applaud her for doing that,” Hagan said, “but plenty of studies already have been done. There’s a huge body of information out there, and other states have comprehensive plans in place to deal with issues that go to working with people in the autism spectrum.

“To her credit, she wanted to get more action,” Hagan said.

The General Assembly’s leaders liked Valentine’s bill enough to let it pass. At the same time, a conference committee cut from the state budget an autism-related, $100,000-per year position Gov. Timothy M. Kaine had proposed.

The position would have provided a state employee “to coordinate with families and community resources to determine the statewide availability of and need for autism spectrum disorders services,” according to the conferees’ report.

The study created under Valentine’s bill carries no cost in the state budget. The audit and review commission will simply add the
autism study to its existing workload.

Hagan said autism services in Virginia schools will not improve until the state’s leaders create a financial incentive for local school systems to train employees who work with autistic children.

“Without a top-down mandate where people at the state level say, ‘you are going to get your people trained or we will withhold funding,’ they have no reason to do it,” Hagan said.

Virginia schools had 6,753 autistic students two years ago, representing a 400 percent increase in eight years, according to Valentine’s bill.

The rate of autism among the population has almost tripled over the past decade, the Centers for Disease Control said.

Barnhill, of Lynchburg College, said that while questions can be raised about the methods of computing the statistics, there is no doubt that autism is a significant problem. She has an adult son who suffers from the Asperger form of the disorder and is waiting behind several hundred people on a list for openings for a training program at a state facility.

Autism affects some victims more severely than others. It is a spectrum of disorders, sometimes apparent soon after birth, and sometimes appearing around age 2 and after infants have started to develop normally.

The disorders’ effects include impaired thinking and inability to relate to other people. Use of language is limited or non-existent, and many victims are unable to communicate their thoughts and feelings.

Some mental-health professionals argue that the increase in autism statistics can be attributed partly to diagnosing methods becoming more sophisticated, and to the profession’s recognizing a larger spectrum of disorders as forms of autism.

Others argue that toxins in the environment may be a factor, Barnhill said, and some people assert that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine for infants may cause autism symptoms to appear. Medical experts haven’t agreed on what causes the disorders.