Task Force on Autism
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- October 2, 2026
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
0:12
Be here. This is my first time being a vice chair, so forgive me. Um, I wanna thank the speaker for putting me on this committee. This is full circle moment for me and I see a few familiar people out there for all of you who don't know, I have a son who has autism and about 10 years ago I used to sit in the crowd and I used to come to these meetings before I became a
legislator, so this means a lot to me, and I'm happy to be here with my co-chair, Senator Boyd, you have anything
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
0:53
to say? Thank you for being here and welcome. Uh, I also want to welcome Representative Lee Johnson. He's, he's with us today. Uh, so just looking forward to getting the meeting getting us organized and getting things moving. We do have something that I wanted to make sure you, um, by the end of August, we're supposed to have a
report that is due. I don't anticipate we're going to have recommendations, so we'll probably be no recommendations this year, but we'll work hard to make sure by that. Next August we have recommendations for the next legislative session. So again, welcome and look forward to working with you. I nominate myself as
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
1:41
the house co-chair of this task force.
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
1:48
And I guess I nominate myself as the Senate co-chair of this task force. All those
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
2:15
in favor of the nomination say aye. Uh, any nas?
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
2:19
The eyes have it. Just, just to clarify, that is not something
Speaker 19
2:26
we normally do for for either of us it's just sign and we're ready to move out. Bear with us. OK. It's gonna adopt the
Speaker 23
2:37
rules and procedures. You go ahead and do that You go in the chair, OK. All right, we're adopting the
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
2:51
task force rules and procedures in exhibit C. questions. Any
questions about that? All right. I make the
Unknown speaker
3:22
I need a second. We have a second. Thank you. All in favor say aye. Any opposed? and no motion passes. Motion passes. Thank you. Right, now we're going to, um, Uh the.
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
4:08
All right, I need a motion to to consider the authorization of the special expenses occurred by the task force. All right, do I have a second? All right. motion adopted in motion 2nd, all in favor say aye, any nas. motion carries. OK.
Speaker 42
4:41
adopting. That's promotion for this one. All right.
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
4:50
I need a motion to adopt
minutes from December 15, 2025 22, sorry. I've got a I need a second, OK.
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
5:13
Any post nay. All right, we adopted
Speaker 31
5:29
those minutes motion adopted. Do that. OK. So what else you say. Earlier, Senator Boyd said that
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
5:44
we will not have that report done by this fall, so we have. OK, I'm just reiterating. And so we discussed that we will have something for next legislative session. You by next, by next August. OK. All right. And the next. Discussion. All right, discussion of future agenda items.
is open. Do we have any suggestions for anything in the
Speaker 54
6:28
future? What kind of suggestions would you? Any, yeah, when
Speaker 56
6:35
you think of like. Sorry, so for agenda items if you're looking for future stuff, are you talking about more or less discussions about health, nutrition, alternative therapies, things like that to bring to the table. OK, yeah, then I would.
I would love to bring some of those. To fruition and just talk about alternative options outside of the mainstream. So, so basically what
Speaker 16
7:06
I would say is, you know, Do we have experts
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
7:09
that we would like to hear from? Do we have issues in the current, you know, legislation that we think could
be improved. Um, what, what is it that you think we, we need to do? Where, where do we need to go to make our Arkansas a better environment to help those with autism, right? Um, I
Speaker 61
7:31
would like to bring to attention just how it's how ABA is
Speaker 63
7:34
applied in the school. I know from my own child it's not accessible where she was in the public school, and so that's a huge concern as a parent is having that support of ABA.
Speaker 23
7:53
You recognize. Thank you. Uh, one issue that I've had several people bring to mind that that maybe we're considering is turn your mic
Speaker 68
8:06
on. Thank you very much. One issue I've had brought by a number of parents, including in my own situation is just the
Thomas Smith
Unverified
8:13
state working to make parents aware of Medicaid waiver services. There's a number of parents that is the children age are just totally unaware of it, just basic awareness of that service is very important and maybe
Speaker 71
8:25
something we could work on. Ms. Barnett, you recognize. Um, since this group was so instrumental in helping the autism waiver get started. I'd like to at some point bring to the group some of our outcome data, number of children served and what the outcomes have looked like because it's been a tremendously successful program and not only for the changes we've seen in children and families, but in workforce development, which was really
not something we expected when we started, but we've seen a lot of the professionals who started in the gra m ous paraprofessionals were so invested in what they were doing and seeing that they've gone back to school and now they're working at the master's level in as interventionists in the program, so it's done lots of things in all across the state. 73 of the 75 counties have had children served, so I'd like to share that data with people at some point. Miss Scott you recognized.
Speaker 75
9:30
I would love to hear that an update on that data, care, and I also, I love it and I'm not sure who would be appropriate to do this or a number of people, but if since this group met, I'm sure there's been a change, hopefully improvement. I think it has improved just in general workforce availability and sort of where we are in terms of access where the gaps are. I feel like in um in clinic, I see that on an individual level, so I have some ideas about where I think the gaps are, but at a policy level that I may not have that picture, um,
correct. So I'd I'd love some sort of update so we could figure out where the gaps are and where we need to work, and the other issue that, um, I think always needs more attention is transition to
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
10:17
adult services and supports. Thank you. Thank you, and I would like to also say um that's the interest of mine too, um, I'm hoping that we can get the a state and um Fayetteville and the other and I think UCA who have those programs targeted for kids or for students to have autism, um,
hopefully we get them in the meeting so they can kind of tell us their program, some good outcomes and see what
type of issues they might have if they have any, so that's on the horizon. Representative Johnson, do you have
any input? Yeah No I not talk.
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
11:04
And I really am not trying to crash the meeting. I was in town and saw this meeting was happening today, and you know, I have an interest obviously. I think some of you at the table know me and certainly the other legislators do, you know, I have a daughter who's an adult with a genetic deletion. She has autism characteristics and so I'm I'm empathetic in a true way to some of the challenges that parents are experiencing across the state. One of the bills that came up this session was around ABA therapy for adults, which is a costly and, you know, undertaking, right? It was a it
was a bill that made it through, I believe, through the Senate to the House and died in the House committee, and I think that's a real challenging issue, um, you know, the history of the autism waiver, which I'm not as familiar with as people in this room, but my, my understanding was that was centered originally around to
get kids early into ABA, right when we still didn't know what ABA was and is it effective and there was still controversy surrounding it, I think now we see that it's clearly effective in the right settings, but it's very intensive, right? Lots of lots of intensiveness to that,
so looking at how we You know, looking at how we continue to provide autism services for people past the age of the autism waiver and then, and then specifically in the autism waiver, you know, you
mentioned awareness around waiver services, I think what I don't know, I don't know if you mean autism waiver or, you know, the other and
other waiver, I don't know the special needs waiver. I don't know even the word yeah, see, yes, right. So, so
which waiver were you referencing? Right, right, because there's confusion, you know, we had a, I had a person in my community
who, um, you know, came late to the game for the autism waiver, and it's going to probably miss out on that because his child was near the age of 5 and just couldn't get the stuff done in time and and you know that that's there's a problem there, right? And so how do we reconcile these two waivers you know, is there something that we need to change around the autism waiver around
qualifications, time frame, and And, and then to your point on the on this uh I'm going to say it wrong again. Yeah, I should know that CS whatever. My daughter has that. It's a wonderful thing. Uh, you know, that's something that that I think people are woefully undereducated on,
and people have this perception that, well, I'm not going to do that because I don't think I'll need it. Well, you do. You need it, and the waitlist is long, you know, and getting off the waitlist takes time and um and so anyway, I would love to see us look at
this task force. Look at those two things in particular, how do we support and pay for these therapies moving into adulthood for autism and then, you know, is there a time to like take a step back and look at the autism waiver again. What are the differences specifically between the autism waiver and the CS waiver, and how do we reconcile those? I would just thank you very much. I grieve for
Thomas Smith
Unverified
14:00
everything you said. I'll just say my experience there is significant confusion between the two, and there's a lot of overlap between
the two, and even someone worked in this space almost every day with parents. It, it, it is difficult to delineate exactly. Where you're supposed to be, but awareness in general, I'm just running appearance consistently for kids in their 20s and 30s who've never heard of either one of these. I agree, yeah, I agree. You recognize and if I
Speaker 56
14:27
could add to that, I think that's really great stuff and really what I was going for for the health and nutrition alternative therapies is more or less kind of right around inside of that. It's expanding the idea of what could
be covered to help parents that maybe don't want to necessarily go the medication route, and they want to try something else that's more therapeutic that gets incredibly costly and so it's already expensive to begin with, and so if you can provide more opportunities for access and and healing in different ways, I think it's definitely worth discussing, but also thank you for getting the waiver going. I mean, it's, it's something that that we've been from benefited from really just now in a short amount of time because we came late to the game, didn't really
know about it. Our daughter's 20. We learned about it when she was 19. We luckily got rushed through incredibly fast, and we're already shrinking our monthly spend that we have to spend. We're not 100% covered with everything that we do, but It has helped exponentially and it's been fantastic. So for anybody who is involved in that, thank you for the hard work that you did. You recognize just in terms of awareness, I'm amazed that we
Speaker 71
15:41
still run into people whose children are teenagers in special education in schools, and they don't know about TEFRA, so we, we hear people all the time saying no, we don't have Medicaid because we're above income and that just is astonishing to me that somewhere along the way someone hasn't said no if you have a child with a disability, you will be eligible for Medicaid, and I don't know the answer to it, but it's, it is an issue that as much as We try to get information out there. It's just hard to get it to everyone who needs it,
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
16:12
yeah, yeah, I don't know. I think talking about, you
know, brainstorming ideas around solutions to that, you know, I think it's not a letter in the mail, probably, right? I don't know if you know, the, the problem is is like if we We have a lot. I don't know how Laurie, do you know how many people
we have on the waitlist. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see it
there. Do you know how many people we have on the waitlist for the,
Allison Guthrie
Unverified
16:39
as of yesterday we have around 700. Yeah, and so like we
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
16:43
already have 1700 waiting. There's a little bit of a catch-22 because if we go out and advertise this and publicize this, and there's now there's people, there's these expectations and all of a sudden there's another 1700 like I believe there's twice as many out there that at least as many out there that aren't aware or don't think they need it and you know, and again these are I've talked to people that are Really like, like yourself, you're like really in a trenched in it and they don't even know and and that's that's hard for me to believe, but the more we publicize it, the more we have to be prepared as a state to
step up and, you know, the problems around workforce are real, you know, that's part of the issue, I think, I think this anticipation of we start getting out and publicizing this, we need to be prepared as a state to step up both financially, but then from a workforce perspective, you know, there's just, I mean, there's an obligation to take care of these folks that we're not maybe prepared to meet from a workforce perspective. Yeah We have
Speaker 71
17:40
76 on the waiting list for the autism waiver and
another 373 who have packets in process that parents are working on, and they're coming in like so far this month we've had 64 applications that have come in, so they're coming in like crazy for that program beyond what we've ever would have imagined, and a lot of those kids are going to age out on that waiting list before they get services because you have to be 5 before you get in a slot, so yeah, there's a huge issue. It's like maybe the pediatricians, I don't know, it feels
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
18:10
like most of these kids, if you have a disability of some kind, most of those kids'
parents are finding their way to their physician, so maybe working with the Arkansas chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. I don't know how often they're, you know, my wife's a pediatrician, when my, when our daughter was born, we didn't know anything about it. She trained here at Children's Hospital. We are from Arkansas and someone came to her after our daughter was born and fortunately and said, Hey, do you know about the waiver? And she was like, No, I don't know anything about it. And so Like there, there really is still probably a gap even in our in our clinicians and providers around, you know, educating
people around the process and the and the the value. I can unfortunately confirm
Speaker 75
18:54
that to be incredibly true. Um, I was in my 2nd year as a board certified developmental behavioral pediatrician before I understood the difference between the two waivers, probably. Uh, completely. Um, I've been doing this for a long time. I have an adult son. I'm still not sure. I know exactly what to tell people about a past versus the waiver, um.
It took me 9 months to get Tara sorted and signed up for. So I think there's um There's a lot of education to be done. I think those of us whose job it is to educate people still have questions. I think I hear, I, I think that's a good point and I understand the concern about um Drumming up business for something that we're having a hard time funding and workforce. I think that's real and it's, it's uncomfortable to say to parents, here's what your child needs, and then not be able to provide it. On the other hand, I think we have
For better or worse, a patchwork of a variety of different programs and services and, you know, there's tougher, there's passes, there's this waiver, there's that waiver. And and the whole thing and how it works together, so not necessarily any individual part of that, but at least to be able to Help people, clinicians as well as parents and professionals understand like, here's the big picture. Here's where you fit. There's a waiting list for this, but in the meantime you can do this. Um, I don't know how best to go about doing that on a large scale, but
It's a confusing landscape. Uh, I, I agree
Thomas Smith
Unverified
20:27
and just, just, this does point more towards the, the, the overall waiver, the autism waiver, but by and large the entry point for parents to waiver services is through the pass, and in my experience, the education, the knowledge level of that specific password or to that family is going to be the key to whether or not they're years ahead of this thing and it's really just luck of the draw. I would feel like the most effective way to address that is make sure that people work them in the past
programs actually understand it themselves. It's amazing how many people have a past. We have never heard the word waiver in their
Speaker 101
20:59
life, so we have, we have some, we passed some legislation this session
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
21:03
requiring the passes to have some accountability to have develop a website to post things on their website to interact with their with their the idea behind it was to provide some clarity around people trying to choose between the passes, right, because if you're in a pass and you There are differences between the passes and depending on what
your child's needs are, you may be better served in one pass over another, right? So for my daughter, she gets driven a lot of places. She has a lot of activities during the day and so there's some passes cover more mileage. Some passes cover less mileage. Like we didn't know that. Somebody had to tell us that. That was hard to find out and we switched passes partly because we were trying to get a coverage set that better suited, so there's maybe an avenue or an opportunity in this interim as this law becomes comes into effect to maybe create some accountability in
the passes around education, around the waivers, so that just a thought when we're listening for, you know, through ALC for rules to come through. There's going to be rules around
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
22:15
that. We can look for that. Um, I just attended a disability summit in Seattle, Washington last week and our neighbors, Tennessee and Oklahoma are doing
some really um innovative things in this space and so it's my hope that we can get them to come to this meeting via Zoom or since they're so close to Arkansas, maybe even come to a meeting and enlighten us on some things that they're doing. Um, in this space. So this is what I think
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
22:52
I'm hearing, so I've been on the autism task force, but it's been
a few sessions since I've been on autism task force. I need to be caught up on what's going on, you know, one what I forgot, and two, where, where we are today. Uh, so what I think I'm hearing is maybe the first thing we need to do is talk about the waiver outcomes, uh, clarify, uh, provide some clarity between the two waivers, understand how the passes fit in. To that, um, maybe we need to have a legislative review so
that we understand, you know, what laws are already on the books before we start talking about changing or adding, let's understand what we already have and hey, there's always the possibility something's not working and we just want to get rid of it, right? Like it's just out there, it's extraneous, um, and then either come in and discuss ABA specifically in schools and then workforce whichever one we do first, um, I don't know the the answer whatever the group thinks or
just whatever we can do, um, do we have any feedback on that as a place to start with our agendas going forward. I'm hearing, not hearing, sorry, it's still early for me apparently. I'm seeing some heads nod. I don't see any heads shaking, so that if anybody has a concern or thinks we should start somewhere else, now would be a good time to express that, um, Representative Johnson, you're always welcome and we always appreciate your feedback, including on what this, what I'm proposing as our agenda moving forward.
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
24:30
No, I appreciate that. And when, when I can come, I'm gonna try to come because I am interested in what this task force is doing. I do think, you know, coverage for adults is important. It's going to come up again next session. We have some invested legislators across across both sides of the aisle that want to see how we can make this happen, but it's a budgetary, it's a real budgetary challenge like it's a like I'm empathetic with DHS and and the payers out there about how to, how to approach this without breaking the bank.
And so you know, trying to find you know in that in that adult coverage space trying to figure out how we're going to transition people and still keep coverage and what coverage is needed, like I don't understand ABA well enough really as a modality of treatment to say with confidence that there's value at starting at age 16 versus starting at age 4. I don't know, you know, so I'd lean on the, you know, some of the colleagues here that have more expertise but definitely keeping that. Front of mine too, because I, I just, I'm confident based on the legislators that ran that
legislation last session that it will, it will come back and be prepared for that and having some thoughts around that
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
25:42
would be important. At this time I like to recognize Representative Tracy Steele for being here and Senator Love back there in the crowd and also want to recognize um Laurie McDonald. We've discussed this ad nauseam, um, particularly with my son, so she's been very helpful and I, and I couldn't count, hopefully count on you to help us through
this as well. We did talk about some of the difficulties with Tera and making it more streamlined so the average person can fill these papers out because I my husband had to do it. It's it's, it's impossible. So hopefully in this working group or this task force, we can figure out ways to streamline the process so parents can feel empowered to do these things and get help for their children. You recognized.
Allison Guthrie
Unverified
26:36
For those of y'all who haven't met me, I'm Jennifer Brisa. I'm the new DDES director at DHS, and so it's great to be here and I volunteer to help pull together some information on the current state and what's available, and I can explain
Speaker 108
26:49
the current waivers and the past system. That would be great. So You recognize. I just wanted
Speaker 71
27:03
to say thank you to Representative Johnson for the legislation he championed a
session ago that changed our diagnostic criteria. We we had originally had to have 3 professionals an MD, a psychologist, and a speech language pathologist, and it was such a logjam for families to be able to get that, that the 2 out of 3 is really helpful. Now what we need to do is make sure people know about it because we're still running into people who think you still have to have 3, but thank you for doing that. Well, of course that was, that was a great effort of people
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
27:31
in this room, people in the city of Little Rock
that brought that to my attention. Like I didn't even know it was a
thing, so great, great way of the legislation working. I would have never passed that without
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
28:43
I write task force. Um, so me and Senator Boyd, we're discussing, um, we're supposed to meet every 3 months and so we need a consensus on how that looks, what time of day that would work best for you all and we looking at September, right, because Probably
the 2nd week of September around the 16th, around ALC week, um, So
if we can get a consensus on how that looks for everybody, so
we could try to set a date so we can get the ball rolling.
Speaker 56
29:26
Just a question, um, with the funding, where, where does the funding for all this stuff come from essentially. So is it just like federal dollars and state dollars, or is there private funding that comes
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
29:36
in, no, no to profit, but again I'm this I'll get outside my wheelhouse pretty quick, right, but it's, it's a blend of federal and state funding, and depending on
which program you're talking about or which waiver you're talking about the funding and you know, everyone knows that's a little bit of a moving target right now too, right? There's anxiety. around any changes that might happen federally and how they might, you know, filter downstream to the state level and so I think there's, but I think there'll be clarity around that, you know, in the next 6 months. We're going to know what passes federally and we're going to be able to prepare for that and you know, but, but it's the sim the simple answer is it's complex.
And, and, and, but it's a, it's a blend and I don't know, I would lean on
my DHS colleagues here, but I don't think there's any private funding that blends with the state and federal dollars. Now with that said, I mean, there's a with that said, there are states doing private public partnerships in a variety of different spaces, you know, this was the New Jersey did some real successful things in maternal health with private public partnerships, so it's not to say there isn't a pathway for some
private public partnerships around autism, it would just, I don't know how that looks or how that would work. But there's probably no regulations against
Speaker 122
31:01
it. There's always regulations against it. But that, that, but with every regulation there's always loopholes,
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
31:08
right? So I mean there's There's going to be regulations, but it's, I think it's
a, I think it's a valuable thing to ask, right? There are lots of
people in the private space, you know, I don't know if you've looked at what they're doing in Northwest Arks around the SLC communities, but I mean there's some really good stuff happening across the state in private sector and making sure we're working in conjunction with them and not in silos, I think it's important. Ms. Barnett, I have a
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
31:43
question. Um, on the agenda is said that it was the creation of white papers in order to assist
families in identifying quality ABA therapy. Have we gotten anywhere on that? No, I saw that on the uh
Speaker 71
31:57
on the minutes and thought, oh, OK, that was 3 years ago. We can certainly do that if that's something that people would like to have. There might be other things people are more interested in at this point, but we provide the kind of information to families all the time. Here are the questions you could ask if you're trying to choose a provider. I have a question. We did pass some legislation this session
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
32:22
around maybe, maybe there's a lot of bills around registering or um ABA therapists, what ABA analysts that we did, we did something this session to try to create a bona fide like we didn't maybe we weren't licensing them. Do you have some insight on that? I know we tried to get it done last session and it got through this session, um. Yes, I can
Speaker 125
32:44
give a little bit of clarification on that, um, with, there was a registry that was passed, so that it's through the
Speaker 126
32:54
Arkansas Psychology Board and so board certified behavior analyst BCBAs can now it's a voluntary registry, so it's not required, but they can become registered through the Arkansas Psychology Board as a board certified behavior analyst in the state. I believe representative Clowney did that bill, and
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
33:10
I forgot, can we take a couple of moments
for everybody to introduce themselves and what filled you in so we can have an idea of what everybody's specialties are.
Thomas Smith
Unverified
33:26
Thank you. My name is Thomas Smith. I'm an attorney. I live in Hot Springs. I also have offices here in Little Rock. A lot of my practices in transactional law. We have a special needs son, so we work a lot with transitioning special needs families, developing special needs trusts for long term care, and we also represent a handful of trustees around the state that serve as trustees on special needs trusts and obviously ran into a lot of parents at this age 1819 point that's where the waiver question comes up.
Speaker 129
34:00
I'm Janisha Hill, I'm a psychologist at the DDC, and I do diagnostic evals and research, especially in black autistic girls, and then also co-occurring mental health conditions in autistic populations. Jennifer Bris, I am the newest addition
Allison Guthrie
Unverified
34:21
to the DHS team. I've been with DHS one year as of last week. I came from the past
world, so I actually was in the leadership position and implemented two of the four existing passes here also a licensed clinical social worker, and I'm excited to meet all y'all.
Speaker 133
34:44
Uh, I'm Dr. Patty Gibson, and I'm an adult psychiatrist, and I've been in the clinical world coming from the opposite end, from the VA, adults, and then working in primary care, and I'm now the medical director for behavioral health for Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield just for
the last year and a half, so I'm on a fast track of learning about autism and really want to learn all that I can from you all and, and see what we can do to
Speaker 71
35:16
improve access. I'm Karen Burnett. I'm the executive director at Partners. We're part of the University of Arkansas Fayetteville. We have offices here in Little Rock where the university's Center of Excellence for Developmental Disabilities Education, research, and service funded by the federal government to
provide a connection between higher education and research and evidence-based practice and the communities, and we've been managing the autism waiver for DDS since it started. I'm Rachel Dodson. Um, I'm
Speaker 61
35:50
a parent of an awesome daughter that's 8 with autism, um, but then I'm also a school counselor at Benton, um, and so I talked to parents daily about autism
Speaker 63
36:04
and um how to get their children in services and how to, what, what TEFR is, so I'm also batting a lot of questions um for parents that know I'm a parent of a child with special needs, but also I'm a special needs parent as well, so. I'm Michael
Speaker 136
36:24
Taylor, special education director for Bryant Public Schools. I'm Sheila Smith.
Speaker 126
36:30
I'm with the Arkansas Behavior Support Specialist under the Department
of Special Education, also a licensed behavior or licensed psychologist and a board certified behavior analyst. I'm Angela Scott. I work at the
Speaker 75
36:45
dentist Developmental Center with Dr. Hill. I'm a developmental pediatrician, so we do mostly diagnostic work. I'm also the proud mother of a 20
Speaker 74
36:53
year old yesterday with autism. My name is Ashley Beast and I'm an educator with Cabot Public
Ashley Beast
Unverified
37:06
Schools, but I am a parent of the 11 year old boy getting into those hormones and it's making it a challenge, so I'm very excited to be here. I'm JD Shop.
Speaker 56
37:20
I'm a father of a 20-year-old daughter with autism. I work for Walmart in northwest Arkansas. All my careers have been in television, marketing and advertising.
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
37:42
So I have another question, um, do we have any interest of um mental health when
it comes to our children with autism. And can somebody lead that up and And lead it up and see who we need to, who need to come to the meetings to kind of present things on the how that works cause I worry about my son at 16 um having that that support that
he needs when he gets out of the house, fortunately he is, he does have somebody he talks to at his school, but also, you know, want to have that for him as he become an adult, so if there's somebody in the committee that wants to hit that up, that'd be greatly appreciated. I'd like
Speaker 98
38:34
to nominate someone my fantastic colleague Dr. Hill would
Speaker 75
38:38
be very qualified to speak on that subject. All right, Miss Hill.
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
38:47
Yes, you recognize. Thank you, Madam Chair, outstanding work that this committee is indulging in. We appreciate everybody's service on this, and as long as we got Doc here, I tell you he's going to keep us going in the right direction, that's for sure. My question is, will this committee dub and look at the issues with the 504 program and kids that are on the spectrum. My concern
that I just found out about a couple of years ago is that the 504 program, and I served on the school board at North Little Rock, so the 504 program K through 12 is pretty stringent and it's doing a lot of good work, kind of the the issue is, is that the collegiate level, you know, some colleges. Respected, adhere to it, and some do not, and I just didn't know if this committee is going to look at that issue as far as
at the collegiate level. Oil representatives
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
39:51
still, I did pass some legislation this session dealing with that, um, the bills that I did
pass is going to look at the data collection of individuals with special needs and how the higher higher institution, higher education institutions, how they are documenting these um the students that come through there so we can figure out if we can make that a better experience
for the students that come through higher it because we do know that it's challenging for some of our students to go to higher ed and actually finish. So, um, we, we are looking into that. One second.
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
40:35
Thank you, Madam Chair, for giving me the microphone again. So, uh, so what I'm going to propose is that we, we're working to get we have to have permission to meet the week of ALC week. I've asked the pro tem and the Speaker, and I've heard
back that from the pro tem that he's OK with it. So if something changes, we'll, we'll let you know, but then going forward with Madam Chair's permission and agreement, then we'll look, we'll look at meeting in audit, the week of audit. Which is usually the week before ALC week. Um, so, but in September we're going to look at legislative council week is, is the next meeting. We will try to see if we can get a little bit longer or bigger block of time because there's going to be a lot to discuss, you know, if,
you know, we want it to be worth your time to show up and and participate and help us understand what's happening. Um. So with you're OK, that's the way we're going to proceed forward. So then I'm going to make a motion with your permission, Madam Chair, to authorize the co-chairs, that would be the two of us to approve a final report due on or before August 31st. So again, I don't anticipate we're going to have any legislative recommendations, so we're anticipate a report that would
say we have no legislative recommendations. Currently and with your permission, I'm making a motion. To um For, for y'all to authorize us to to have that
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
42:12
second? All in favor say aye I favor say, I mean all in. I say nay. OK, the
eyes have it. motion adopted.
Also, can I add something too. Are we interested in technology? And how technology can help our kids with autism like as they get older and matriculate out of high school and cause there's all kinds of new innovative ways of Having technology help instead of having AIDS. So, um, it's my goal to have
somebody in here to talk about technology and the role and how and how they can
help our children with autism, so is that something that we might be interested in.
OK All right, do we have any other suggestions or any other comments, concerns or questions? Yes, ma'am. Um,
Speaker 61
43:20
just going back to diagnosis, um, I know it was difficult for my daughter to
Speaker 152
43:24
get a diagnosis. It took a very long time, and so going forward
telling parents, um, you know, dentist developmental, I know the waiting list is like 6 months, and so I've heard from other private companies like Kidsource, just an example off the top of my head that they do private um testing, um, and so if there if we could have kind of a list of places that parents could go and the type of coverage they have to have their child screened for autism, it would be helpful because uh right now I only have two places to tell other parents to take their
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
44:01
children and it takes a long time. Did you have some say Representative Johnson. Oh, I have that look on my face. Uh, maybe, yeah, I was just thinking about, I was thinking back to our conversation about how we connect with families and individuals who need information around the autism
waiver, the CES waiver and the passes, you know, my thought has always been DHS, right? That's where we go, but I'm looking around the room at educators and thinking about, you know, we've moved pre-K services out of DHS over to the Department of Education, you
know, Desi has its own Medicaid, it's, I mean, there's, there's some very splintered approaches within Medicaid. because we, you know, we had this Medicaid within DESE, this totally like adjacent to the Medicaid that's in DHS, maybe having someone from the Department of Education come to visit with us or be here, you know, I see DHS represented here at the table. I see educators represented at the table, maybe having someone from DESE, you know, someone with special ed or someone within the Medicaid department at DESE. There's several names I could give you
that would probably be good. I'm just as we're having these conversations, I'm thinking, man, I wish Fill in the blank was here so
I could say, hey, how about this, you know, I'll
Speaker 126
45:14
be your way. I believe that Dr. Jeff Adams, who serves on here from the Arkansas Department of Education would be able to answer some questions I see that now. Sorry,
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
45:21
I did not mean to slot Jeff. Unfortunately he was not able to be here today, but he's so let's
Speaker 126
45:25
just make sure he can be here. He'd be great.
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
45:28
That's one of the people I was thinking of. So I'm seeing that name now. Yeah, perfect. And I have a question for the
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
45:36
educator and the the um counselor, um, dealing, dealing
with my son and all that wonderful stuff that you have to go through and, you know, while, you know, Kate. K to 12, which he's still in, he's 16, so is there something easier to make your life easier as a counselor, like when you're dealing with the parents, is there something that you can suggest and
something that maybe we can work on and make it more streamlined for parents. I think
Speaker 152
46:07
the biggest thing is, I'm in a little bit different situation. Everybody gets passed to me because I'm a parent of a child with special needs so like, you know what to do because you've done it personally. So I think for, for my fellow counselors, they have 0 training, um, as far as this is how we go through and talk to a parent with special needs. This is how we, uh, these are the resources we could provide, that's why I set a list because there's many times I'm going off personal experience, I'm not going off of an exhaustive list,
Speaker 154
46:39
um, and then I think also um we are in charge of doinged referrals, um, counselors are, um, we're not very educated. on doing that as a state and that may be different for different districts, but I think it's just a, they, most of the counselors I work with are more than willing to help. They just don't know how, and they're in the counselor role so they're not in the classroom role with kids with autism every day. So, um, more education would be great, I think.
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
47:10
So I have a question for you. So for I know for um the Department of Ed,
they have the, what do they call like the announcements where things were educators can
see what's happening. Do y'all have anything for counselors like a website or something. We have Arsa and AA,
Speaker 154
47:28
so we have the national and the uh state commit, you know, our, um, Um, I'm losing my words right now, but we, we meet, you know,
several times a year, but that is just something I think we we get some of the really watered down version, but then the actual giving support or being able to guide people to the right place. I think that's the biggest thing is just if we could give parents more resources. We get a lot of education on if mental health, suicide, things like that. We have lots of things to give parents. But we don't have a lot to give them in the terms of if their
Speaker 158
48:11
child has an autism diagnosis. Yeah. Thank you. I
Speaker 136
48:21
just want to say a couple of things from an educator's perspective and leadership in a school setting. So there have been a lot of positive changes that are and the Department of Ed have implemented over the last couple of years to help us in the schools, notably that we can begin building ABA services that has been a game changer for the public school system, something that I hope is a part of this
discussion here. We want all of our kids in our schools every single day, and I love every one of our 1800 kids at Bratton who have special education needs, and many of them are children with autism. Our challenge is for the students who have the most profound levels of disability and I'm talking about autism specifically. Um, we want those kids in our school every single day, um, and we spend, I don't want to say the number, but it's a huge number that we
spend on ABA services on those kids. They have an ABA with them. They have multiple adults assigned to them every day. They're in very individualized spaces that cost a lot for construction and keep and keeping those spaces safe from week to week. We don't see the needle move oftentimes with some of those children, and we know that we're doing everything that we can to keep the adults safe and to keep the kids safe and to help that kid make progress. That is our dilemma. We, I see the state
making efforts to help us be able to recoup dollars so that we can take care of those children, but after We get to a point to where we don't see that needle moving and we're not making much progress with those kids, and I'm talking about that very unique small population of kids who are in our schools. We want those kids to be in our schools. Let me say that loud and clear. We just don't know always where to go next. There aren't a lot of community resources for us to tap in. To help us achieve what we can't achieve already with all of the
resources that are costly that we're pouring into those kids. Does that
Speaker 137
50:16
make sense? That's the only thing that I wanted to add to the conversation. Thank you. And I kind of want
Ashley Beast
Unverified
50:35
to piggy off. On what both of you guys were saying, working in the school district and having us send in the district that I work at, it does seem like in the beginning,
like around diagnosis, if you're getting diagnosed young, you have your speech therapist, your OTs, your PTs that are really pushing a lot of resources and helping you, you know, get farmed out where you need to go, but as a mom of 11 year olds and it does seem that after kind of an age those resources just drop off and you're just kind of left in the private sector just having to figure it out on your own, and I think that would be incredibly helpful even to help on the school and if we had a clear path of resources, especially for those
Middle Ages and coming into the, uh, secondary education level before we become an adult, what kind of resources can we continue, I think would be immensely helpful. Yeah. I don't know, it's hard, it's hard to know
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
51:32
when to be quiet and when to keep talking. I mean that there's a lot of overlap in problems and issues that you're trying to keep it specific to autism, but, but, you know, we, we are, we need an overhaul of how we fund special education in
Arkansas, you know, we're one of the only states that have just sort of a flat rate, right? We don't have any recognition as a school district level of what percentage of your kids are sped and not sped, you know, the average school district in Arkansas has about 13.5% sped kids, but there are school districts that have 20%. And there are school districts have 2%, and they're all funded the same based on your average daily census, there's no recognition of your sped concentration in funding and then within that, as you know, to your point, not every sped kid has created the same, right? I mean, some sped kids require
intensive dollars and some don't, and we make no acknowledgement of that at a state level by trying to create criteria or categories as how to fund special education. There's a lot of interest in Changing how we fund special education. Some of this comes back to data. We don't do a great job collecting the data points that DesE would like us to have to really create a new funding system, but to your point, I think, I think, you know, that, that unique subset of kids whether they have autism
or something else, and they have intensive services and you're really tapping out on what you can do for them. We need to do a better job as a state of supporting our school districts with funding proportionate to that. acknowledged that some of these kids cost more than others, and you know all the conversations you can have around that. This has been something I've been championing for a couple of years, you know, help, help move the needle and to, you know, in fairness to everyone involved, everybody, everybody agrees we need to change. It's just change
is hard. Change is slow. You want to be, you know, thoughtful in how you
make changes, but I can't help listening to that and just think we could do better, but in our school
Speaker 71
53:34
districts around special education. I think one of the things that makes me wonder about as well is, um, whether it's a a student that you have who has just really severe autism and or those students that you're struggling with who have such severe behavioral challenges. I, I, we're seeing, we're operating
a pilot project for DHS to try to do some prevention things with that population and I think there's a connection we're missing between school and home, and if we could do some things in the homes to help support families. So we could get some consistency across those environments. I can't help but think we'd have, we'd see that needle move some. And I also think that the that that's another um push for us to really invest in early intervention because if we got some of those kids didn't get any early intervention, and the
ones that we see if we get them in there really young and early before some of those behaviors develop because they're so frustrated because they can't communicate, then we can, we can head off some of that, but I think we're really missing a big piece between school and home in that connection. All right we're
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
54:40
wrapping up one more comment. I love what you're saying there,
Speaker 56
54:44
by the way, because maybe there's a connection for homeschool families in that sense too. So for those who don't send theirs to public
education, something around that could be really, really helpful for support. All right,
Thomas Smith
Unverified
54:59
well, I like to thank this committee for this robust conversation that we are having, and we can
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
55:05
also continue this conversation via email if you have any questions or have anything that you want to add, please feel free to email us and I and I guests our staff have everybody's email addresses so we can always um continue the discussion via email or phone
call. I want to thank everybody again for coming. I want to thank my co-chair, Senator Boyd. And I want to thank you for your patience. This is my first time sharing a committee, so, um, I again, I do thank everybody for being here, and I think we And we are adjourned.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Election of Co-Chairs
C. Adoption of Task Force Rules and Procedures
D. Consideration of a Motion to Authorize Chairs to Approve Special Expenses Incurred by the Task Force
E. Adoption of Minutes from December 15, 2022
F. Discussion of Annual Reporting Requirement and Identifying Legislative Priorities
G. Discussion of Future Agenda Items
H. Other Business
I. Adjournment
Documents
| Title | Type | Pages | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda — TASK FORCE ON AUTISM, Jun 17, 2025 | Agenda | 1 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit C -- Task Force Rules of Procedure | Exhibit | 2 | Official source ↗ |
| Exhibit E -- DRAFT Minutes Autisim Task Force 12-15-2022 | Exhibit | 1 | Official source ↗ |
Speakers
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
Speaker 19
Speaker 23
Speaker 30
Speaker 31
Speaker 42
Speaker 45
Speaker 54
Speaker 56
Speaker 16
Speaker 61
Speaker 63
Speaker 68
Thomas Smith
Unverified
Speaker 71
Speaker 75
Representative Lee Johnson
Unverified
Allison Guthrie
Unverified
Speaker 101
Speaker 108
Speaker 122
Speaker 125
Speaker 126
Speaker 129
Speaker 133
Speaker 136
Speaker 74
Ashley Beast
Unverified
Speaker 98
Representative Tracy Steele
Unverified
Speaker 146
Speaker 152
Speaker 154
Speaker 158
Speaker 137