Task Force on Autism
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Unknown speaker
0:00
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
2:00
All right, give us just about 60 seconds or less and we're gonna get started here, okay?
Good morning, welcome to the Arkansas Legislative Autism Task force. We are going to get started here. So the first thing is consideration of a motion to
approve the April 1st, 2026 meeting minutes. Is anybody open to making a motion? Okay. And we've got a second over here. Got a motion. We've got a second. All in favor say aye. okay April 1st 2026 meeting minutes are approved so the next thing on the agenda item is I've personally had some interest from the broader public of Arkansas about how to be on this task
force which I think is good healthy and shows the importance of of autism and what we need to do as the state to to assist so the the first one is we've got an appointment with Arkansas psychology board we've been in contact with them this is a board certified behavioral analyst appointed by the Arkansas psychology board we're gonna follow up and see if we can find somebody if not we will put that in our
report our legislative report and that's something that we might need to look at updating the legislation on. The second is a member to represent Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield. I've personally reached out to their government relations person to see if we could identify a person and hopefully we will have that person identified before we meet again. One member who is a clinical geneticist appointed by UAMS. Apparently UAMS doesn't really have that role at
the moment. They are looking again. They're going to go back. I've reached out to their government relations team and they're going to check again and again and if we don't identify that then that'll go in the report and we will look at that as a potential update to the task force going forward um before i move on there's a note here we do have 14 field positions and six vacant positions um the next thing is and i've reached out to senate staff about this we need four
members who are parents or guardians of children with autism appointed by the president pro tem of the senate uh we have three of those four which are vacant and so again we'll work to try to to fill that so in the interim if anyone knows of uh an arkansan who uh is a parent or guardian of a child with autism please don't hesitate to to reach out to me or representative in it and we can um, work with, um, you know, the, um, Senate president pro tem to see if we can get somebody
appointed. Okay. So there's, there's that. Any questions, comments, concerns on, on that issue? Okay. Um, so again, if we are unable to fill those roles, then what we will do is we will include it in our legislative report and we will look at updating the statute in the, uh, next General Assembly. Next on the agenda item D presentation on Developmental Disabilities Provider Association DDPA so you're welcome to come to the table
and the first step will be to introduce both of you to introduce yourself for the record so state your name and who you represent and after both of you have done that then however you want to proceed feel feel free to proceed hi thank you
Speaker 10
6:47
so much for having us today my name is Yukiko Taylor I'm executive
Speaker 11
6:54
director of developmental disabilities provider Association good morning my name is
Leah Henderson
Unverified
7:00
Leah Henderson I'm the CEO of Civitan services and we are a provider for developmental disabilities located in Saline County well thank you both for
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
7:10
being here today proceed the way y'all think you should all
Speaker 10
7:16
right thank you very much so today first I would like to I guess there's a two topics today the
Speaker 16
7:26
The first one is we'd like to talk about and introduce who we are, who is DDPA. And the second portion will be the available resources for the individual with IDD but then yet senior citizens within DDPA. Okay, so who
Speaker 10
7:48
is DDPA? So I guess there's no point maybe explaining what the developmental disabilities are in this group. But, and then here is our DDPM mission, and then that's our mission statement is we are, is to promote the shared interest of member providers in
Speaker 18
8:07
their services, oh sorry, I cannot see, to
Speaker 16
8:11
children and adults with developmental disabilities by providing quality education, professional networking opportunities, and effective advocacy.
So we are, right now it says 78 service providers as our member providers, but since I created this slide, we are welcome to more IDD service providers. So right now we have 80 service providers like Leah's organization. And then collectively among us, we provide services to over 13,000 individual adults and children with IDD, intellectual and developmental disabilities. And then we provide services all over the Arkansas that all cover 75 counties.
And collectively, we have over 14,000 dedicated staff. And we were established in 2001, and this year is our 25th anniversary. And then as a DDPA, we provide, of course, all this networking opportunities and education trainings. We provide
Speaker 10
9:16
or we host two annual conferences a year and also two workshops a year.
And then among our member providers, these are the
Speaker 16
9:28
programs that are available. You know, these are the services that they provide. The first one is the Early Intervention Day Program, we call the EIDD. There's other services for children, you know, provides different therapies and then cares. And the second one is adult day program. Adults with IDD, intellectual and developmental disabilities, attend there to obtain independent living skills.
And then, of course, you know, socialization
Speaker 10
9:59
and then be with your friends. It's a great time. And then the third one is supported employment. We provide to help
Speaker 16
10:09
them job opportunities in the communities. And initially, you know, we provide a job coach to
Speaker 10
10:16
go with them. So the job coach will learn skills and then task together. And the goal is the job coach to, I guess, fade out.
And this is actually the clients that I used to work with. And then she had a job opportunity at the flower shop. And then that's a picture from them. And then the fourth program
Speaker 16
10:41
or services, the intermediate care facilities, there is about 13. Within the DDPA, we have about 13 organizations who has ICF. And then they can have a more, you know, closer, the cares that they need for them to keep their safeties.
And the next is the work activities. And then, again, that is the goal. during the daytime some clients may attend a day program but then some has a little work training opportunities within the facility so the goal is for them to kind of you know move up to the
Speaker 10
11:15
support and employment you know then and this is actually the thrift store um i'm using all the picture where i used to work but um so they you know the different clients have different tasks and then job and they'll get paid uh but
Speaker 16
11:28
there's some could be to i had a client who run the cash
register and who did it better than anybody else and it could be bagging or could be hanging the clothes or going through it or pricing you know so even within just the three store there's different type of
Speaker 10
11:46
tasks that you can start kind of training and then goal is to move on
Speaker 16
11:51
to the supported employment if they can and then the last one is a ces a community and a waiver in residential services it'd be the after hours or the some clients might need the 24-7 service 101 or could
be the group shared staff can have life and opportunities in learning independent living skills in a socialization that was my first part and
Speaker 10
12:18
then that was kind of explaining who ddpa is and then what we do and what we represent. And then the next is that when Ms. Kristen approached, then there may be some information
Speaker 18
12:32
regarding what's available, what are available services for the people with intellectual and developmental disabilities
Speaker 10
12:38
about more seasoned age. So I conducted a little survey within the DDPA, and then we have about 39 providers responded. And then with that survey, we have about 60%. And then I was kind of asking them, it's like, anybody age about 55-ish, you know. And then I was really curious because I never really conduct this kind of, you know, survey. Specifically
Speaker 18
13:07
focus on more the older age or the seasoned age.
Speaker 10
13:12
60% of clients are female and 40%. And then I was curious what kind of services are they
Speaker 16
13:19
receiving within the DGPA. And about 38% attend adult day program. And then 33% receive transportation. They don't have to worry about how to get there. And then 22% of work activities. And the waiver is 44%. And residential is 23%. That is that way,
Speaker 10
13:39
you know, like living in an apartment and in a housing or condo that could be the shared stuff.
You might have a roommate. You may not have. Depends on probably your needs and then your likes. And you might notice there's no supported employment. That is the job opportunity in the community. Well, I thought maybe, well, because we're focused on the more older age or the senior age, I was like, I guess they're retired. And then, yeah, they should. You know, I want to get retired. So this is the data that I conducted and collected within the DDPA. And then I'm pretty sure there are more than 39 providers who have clients who are older than maybe 55.
And then it says available service for seniors in Arkansas here. And then it's really the same exact same thing that earlier that I mentioned, because all the services, you know, there's really no age limit. Well, I guess not
Speaker 16
14:43
children's service, but so all of a sudden these services are available to everybody. and then including any individual with IDT with more older age. And, I'm sorry, I was looking at the picture.
And then here are some, within the data collected, there's the, you know,
Speaker 10
15:04
in case you're wondering the region-wise, it's like, oh, I know somebody in the northwest Arkansas and looking for services that are who so-and-so can attend. So I kind of created the little organized list, and
Speaker 16
15:16
then I attach the list of the organization with a name and then contact information and email, phone number, and
Speaker 10
15:24
then if you just don't want to even check the list, just give me a call.
And here is my contact information. And, you know, this is DDP, a second year to have the full-time executive director. So we would like to appreciate this opportunity to spread
Speaker 16
15:46
awareness that we are here. And it would do represent, you know, 80 service providers in Arkansas. That
Speaker 18
15:58
know, care for the individual with intellectual development or disability. Oh, no, I didn't finish my phone number there.
Speaker 34
16:11
But here's my email address, and then here's the –
Speaker 32
16:15
I'm so sorry. But, yes, if you have any
Speaker 10
16:19
– needing any information regarding developmental disabilities or any providers, please feel free to give me a
Leah Henderson
Unverified
16:29
say something? No, I don't really have anything to add. But I think Yukiko always does an excellent job of kind of sharing information about our association. I mean, the only thing I think I might add would be that obviously autism would fall under those categories of intellectual and developmental disabilities.
And so that's just one of the many categories that we serve. Any questions
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
16:59
from you? I don't think I have any questions, but you clearly do some important work, and we appreciate that, and we definitely appreciate you being here today. Does anybody here on the task force have any questions? Okay. Thank you very much for being here and giving us an update on what you do to help Arkansans. Thank you.
Next, we're going to have a discussion to propose an amendment to Act 656 of 2021 One, to include licensed psychological practitioners exhibit E1 to E3, Mr. Daniel Wisaki, if you want to come to the table and introduce yourself and tell us who you represent.
Speaker 45
17:56
My name is Daniel Wysocki. I'm a licensed psychological examiner, independent. I'm from
Speaker 46
18:08
northeast Arkansas, and then I own and operate Wysocki Psychological Services in Jonesboro, Arkansas. So really, my presentation is about attempting to reduce the wait list for autism waiver services. So in 2025, the legislature passed that there could now be master's level
licensed psychological practitioners, and that was actually something that we had previously. We had licensed psychological examiners independent, and that's actually my license. So during the time between those two licenses, there was a small gap that when we were going to have the LPEI actually be sunset so it was no longer going to be a license but during that small piece of time many organizations including the American Psychological Association also saw that
we were not providing enough services to those in need so we kind of nationally reversed course and master's level psychologists or psychology practitioners were actually encouraged. And Arkansas was actually one of the first states to sort of take that on and to reopen that license. But like I said, there was a small gap of time where Act 656 in 2021 was passed. And this set up where there were qualified providers
that were the only licensees that could provide access to certain care in Arkansas under the autism waiver and also under the CES waiver that the DTPA people spoke about. So these are very important programs for a lot of people in Arkansas. So I'm kind of discussing how a licensed psychological practitioner has many of the same qualifications as these other providers
that are listed in the Act of 656 in 2021 and may be advocating for the consideration that they also be included as qualified providers. And I do have a couple points on that because Arkansas Medicaid, they will credential and pay what are soon-to-be LPPs but are considered LPEIs right now they will pay to do those evaluations but then they won't recognize those evaluations so there's sort of a little bit of a
contradiction there that we're paying for duplicate assessments because we will pay for them and then if they go to apply for these waiver services they will be denied and then they will have to go back and apply for these services again with a different provider, maybe be on the 12- to 18-month wait list. So there's just a little bit of a disconnect there with what we're already spending money on and then not reaping the benefits from. So kind of to continue that, a lot of these wait lists,
they are very time sensitive. This isn't that you can get on at age 16 and then hopefully get services later on. There's certain ages. If they hit their fifth birthday while still on an autism waiver wait list, they're ineligible for the program. So you can imagine, you know, we start to get on these wait lists. There's 12 to 18 months to get testing. The birthday passes, and then we miss out on services. So, again, what happens, and I kind of have a little stat on here,
while there is sort of an upfront investment, There has been studies that show if we can get that early intervention, we can save approximately $1.6 million per individual by reducing the need for the long-term support in special education. So again, there's some money being left on the table by not sort of at least revisiting the possibility of the licensed psychological practitioner being considered a qualified provider. And like I said, it doesn't just affect children.
The CES waiver also follows those same guidelines that indicate that there has to be a MD or DO as one of the people that approves the autism diagnosis, and then it can either be a speech pathologist or a psychologist. Those are the three qualified providers that are currently recognized in the state of Arkansas to apply for those programs, and it has to be two of those three. And like I said, and like was already spoken about, those programs like the CES waiver, like it had already been mentioned, are the ones that provide the adaptive equipment, supportive living, respite care, community integration, all those things that we want these people to have that unfortunately are just on almost wait lists that they just can't ever get through.
So I've talked a little bit here about the quality and scope. Evidence shows no difference between the doctoral level psychologists and master's level regarding ethical complaints or disciplinary actions and no decline in quality of care. This service falls within the scope of an LPP and aligns with the definition of a qualified professional. I have listed here just how you can kind of see how the LPP compares to some of the other licensees.
The psychologist usually is educational level, obviously a doctorate, and they would administer, usually the gold standard is an ADOS-2, some sort of adaptive measure that says if they have deficits or not. And then typically in IQ, obviously every evaluation is going to have some variation in what they offer, you know, along with an interview. but all that can also be administered by a master's level or a specialist level licensed psychological practitioner.
They can administer the same tools. So that diagnosis from a psychologist is accepted by school's insurance and also the diagnostic manual, DSM-5TR, speech-language pathologist, that's all accepted by school's insurance. The only one that is not included in the act that is also accepted by school's insurance in the DSM is a licensed psychological practitioner. So, again, the same tools that are often used for these evaluations can be competently and professionally administered by a licensed psychological practitioner to meet those same standards.
And it would still be having to have two professionals agree on the diagnosis. So they would just be added into that pool of qualified providers. Some more things just about what a qualified professional is defined as is in Act 656, a qualified professional must be educated and licensed in fields related to physical health, mental health, and child and adolescent physical and psychological development. The LPP meets these standards through graduate training and state licensure focused on human development
and psychological health um so the listing of what the actual criteria is to be a qualified professional aligns with the services that an lpp can provide there's nothing within the language that does not overlap with having those same services being able to be provided by an lpp and that just sort of goes into the wait list part again um that there's a there's a lot of pieces aside from just providing that initial diagnosis that parents have to go through.
There's applications. They have to be placed on other wait lists. You're hoping to look for a spot. You hope to talk to a past organization. You hope to get into an ABA program. But I think for a lot of parents, at least having what they're working towards being known and alleviating at least that little bit of a bottleneck could be helpful overall. So I know that there's still many other hurdles that parents may face but i think this would at least ease their mind a little bit um and then um so this just i talk a little bit about um the bottleneck itself um the delay that causes
many children to age out of that early intervention program because once they hit a certain age there there's no going back like the program has closed for that family um there isn't another opportunity there um and then uh it isn't just a pediatric issue um adults also face the same restrictive criteria um so also by aligning with these statutes um arkansas could increase psychological testing um by about i i said 44 just because there's 267 active psychological professionals
available that are currently licensed as lpeis so that would reduce the testing delay with no decline in quality of care so we wouldn't have to have new professionals educated we wouldn't have to have anything to begin the immediate ramp up that these providers in in what is arkansas has been considered a psychologically poor state just because there's not a provider a lot of providers these professionals would be ready to help families get access to a lot of these programs
that I think you know we're doing a great job like I said with the DDPA getting some of these resources available for families but it seems like one of the big barriers is still getting that actual diagnosis and testing so that's that that presentation and I'll be happy to answer
Speaker 48
28:07
any questions if anyone has anything that they'd like to add Jennifer you or help me with
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
28:16
how you say your last name all right mr. Brzez a please
Speaker 54
28:23
proceed with your question thank you mr. chair I too have been really interested in this new licensure type but do you have an update on I have not heard of a university or school that has started or restarted a program to continue and to restart this educational process for these degrees do you have any
Speaker 46
28:52
update on that I have heard that Arkansas State University has a master's program in
psychology and since I'm from northeast Arkansas I don't know as much about the other side of the state but I've also heard that Conway may also have a program that's either in the works or has already started to continue to get some
Speaker 54
29:15
of these licensees taken care of. That would be great. As someone who also looks to hire LPEs it's been very hard to find a new workforce and so just concerned that we haven't had a university commit to re-offering this program and getting
people additionally trained on the licensing board do you have an update on that as the licensing board been moving forward with issuing these license yet um
Speaker 47
29:42
as of last month um they had put out some public language um
Speaker 46
29:47
for review that started to sort of cement what was going to be the licensure you know what the supervision all those kinds of things look like um and it does still cover a lot of those same areas as the lpei it's almost identical um but it was going back for
public comment as they were making some updates because i did attend the arkansas psychology board meeting um and there were just a lot of feedback about different areas that maybe need to be updated so i you know obviously i i'm not privy to the timeline but i know that they are currently working on it and they're going to submit another revision i think for public comment to try to get
Speaker 54
30:30
things rolling yes yeah thank you for that and mr. chair just wanted to clarify that some of the what you're reporting on was specifically
related to the autism waiver and that individuals with active Medicaid can still receive BCBA ABA therapy up until the age of 21 without being on the autism waiver. Thank you. Thank you,
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
30:53
Ms. Brise. I've got a quick question, and then we're going to go to Dr. Scott here. Just out
of curiosity, speech pathologists are on this list. Any insight is to, so we're going from MD, DO, certainly understand that, and then we've got a psychologist.
Full disclosure, my sister's a speech pathologist. I'm just curious how they fit in, And then the follow-up question is going to be, and either of our task force members, if you have an answer to this too, you're fine to pop in. An audiologist, if we're looking to expand, is there a reason an audiologist would be inappropriate to add to the list as well if
Speaker 48
31:37
we're looking at it? No, those are great questions. You know, as far as speaking for
Speaker 46
31:42
audiologists and speech pathologists, that's not an area I'm familiar with.
I know that with autism, communication is a huge part of the diagnosis. So that's, you know, why I would imagine that that was the professionals that are well-trained in those areas. So I wouldn't be able to speak, you know, what the thought process was at that time to select those specific practitioners. But for any possible updates, I think that anyone that might fall under those qualified provider language that is already written into state law,
that if they overlap with those qualifications, then I would definitely support them being included. Thank you, Ms.
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
32:25
Brise or Dr. Scott, either of y'all have any input.
Speaker 54
32:32
So, it was before my time when speech pathologist was
Speaker 61
32:35
added, Mr. Chair, but I do know we have some great, I think we have a couple of speech pathologists on our committee that would probably be better able to explain that they do feel that it's within their scope of practice to administer some of those recognized standard autism assessments.
Although I do think there's still some debate on whether they can do an official DSM diagnostic diagnosis. They are qualified within their scope to do those assessments, those autism assessments. Thank you. And Dr. Scott,
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
33:10
if you have any input, that'd be awesome. And then feel free to move forward
Speaker 64
33:15
with questions. Thank you. So I am neither a speech pathologist nor a psychologist or an LPE, so I'm the third wheel here.
What I can say is that I've worked for close to 10 years on an autism team at the Dennis Developmental Center, and there's three of us, and I'm the wrong one to have here for this conversation, but I certainly have an in-depth sort of day-to-day understanding of how those disciplines interact with each other and what their roles are in the diagnosis. Speech pathologists, so I agree with the idea, this has been in place for a long time.
There's been a recent change, as I'm sure you know, where at first you needed all three. You needed the trifecta, as we would say, and the recent change is that you only need two of the three. When those three disciplines were written down was before my time as well. So I've always understood that to be a function of the services, the diagnostic services that kind of happened to be in place in Arkansas, partly because the Dentist Developmental Center had been there and does a fair bulk of the diagnostic evaluations, and we were a
multidisciplinary clinic and a large part of our workforce were speech pathologists. I think it's important to think about within each of these disciplines, there is a wide variety of what somebody can do in their day-to-day lives and what their actual expertise is, even if they have the same letters and numbers after their names, right? I mean, legally, an adult GI doctor can diagnose autism. I, of course, have thoughts and feelings about that. But on the books, there's nothing to
distinguish whether an MD actually has any experience or training or anything. Doesn't have to even be a pediatrician, as far as I understand it. So speech pathologists, of course, do a number of things, many of which are sort of in line with audiology and sort of sound production, communication, oral motor skills, that sort of stuff. The speech pathologists that work with us at the DDC do very different kinds of work than what I think we normally think of speech paths as doing.
They're not doing therapeutic work, although they're qualified to do that. They have worked specifically with a population of children with autism, sort of trained on the job by developmental pediatricians and psychologists where this is our specialty in the building this is what we do and they are also certified in the ADOS 2 which is much harder than anything I've had to do for my training I'll be completely honest like that certification is a lot and I would rather have somebody who had a bachelor of arts in art history who was certified
in the ADOS 2 and took it seriously knew how to do it than an adult GI doctor because it it's not really it's difficult I understand with policy so you have to write something down to capture the nuance but there's a fair amount of nuance I guess is my point to what kind of variety of folks and training you can have under each of those labels if that makes sense that that brings me to my question about the first of all thank you for that presentation and I am obviously very
sympathetic to the waitlist concerns I think going from the trifecta to the bifecta, as we talk in our shorthand in clinic, has helped tremendously. We've been able to revamp a lot of our clinic processes because some kids really do need three people from different disciplinary perspectives thinking about that kid all day long and hashing it. There are some kids whose presentation is complicated enough that they really need all of that, but there are many,
many children, particularly, excuse my allergies, there are many, many children who don't need that, And so we've been able to triage based on their initial presentation, and I think that's helped. I don't have the information off the top of my head to speak about our wait list, other than to say that it has gone down. It's still too long. If there's a wait list at all, that's too long. Do you have any thoughts, and again, you're the one trained in psychological testing, and I am not, about is there a feasible way to have the policy about who is qualified
to diagnose autism have something to do with who is properly trained to administer an autism specific measure like the ADOS-2 because there are we see this frequently in clinic a child has already been through an evaluation and they bring in an ADOS and I don't want to speak ill of anybody who's trying to help these children but it's very clear that not everybody knows how to do it and we have reports that come in that's just it's kind of nonsense we have people who have put
their scoring on there which is I understand that you're not even supposed to do but then they added up wrong like pretty egregious errors and now that billing has been billed and according to the principles of the test you're not supposed to give the same test within a certain period it's really limiting for us as well we spend a fair amount of time grumbling about it in clinic and that this child has already seen something and the family believed themselves to be going through an autism evaluation only to be told, well, yes, you have autism, but I can't do anything about it. Now you
have to start all over, which is a frustrating deal for everybody. And I don't think, I'm not saying that that necessarily happens more often with LPEs that, you know, don't have the PhD sign off versus other people in the community. That probably isn't tied to what discipline. But is there a way to indicate like okay fine you can be an lpe1 but what i'm more interested in is are you properly certified to do whatever kind of testing you do and so i guess my question is within the
world of standardized testing within your training um how how best would you
Speaker 46
39:25
try to capture that um well within the arkansas psychology board um there are some i guess special privileges granted to psychological practitioners. We're the only discipline that I know of that can actually use the language that we provide psychological evaluations. That's protected language, so there may be something there
that could be incorporated if the legislature is interested in that it be an actual psychological evaluation and not something outside of that discipline. That would be the only language that I know of that is actually protected. But as far as what the legislature would say, the only thing that I could say on that is, you know, I think the boards are really good at policing these types of things. So, you know, and I've had to do something similar myself.
If I feel that a fellow practitioner is not adequately providing the skills that they say they are, then it's sort of my responsibility to bring that up. and that's the only thing I would say is you know there is protection for psychological evaluations and then maybe the the boards would be helpful to police each discipline because like you had said like I don't really know much about what speech pathologists can provide and what they can't provide and that's not really my place to even ask you know like I'm not trying to overstep
because they're very professional and an audiologist like you mentioned that that wouldn't be something that i would be able to personally understand um so i think each profession needs to really sort of take that responsibly on i think um to be able to recognize okay well that might be something for the board like maybe there's something there that they need to complete an audit once in a while like let's look at a report that's been completed do we feel confident that this is within their scope of practice are they accurately practicing you know so that you're
exactly right the legislature it's very hard to write language that there's not a loophole or something that's always going to be there but I think the boards could maybe really play a role in that if maybe there was some communication with them about these concerns because they sort of police the practitioners and that may be the part that maybe could help you know kind of deal with that obstacle there.
Speaker 64
41:51
Dr., hit it one more, one more time. Hello? Okay. Sorry. And I apologize for taking over the conversation, but one thing, Senator Boyd, that I also wanted to mention about speech-language pathologists that came to mind, the American Academy of pediatrics guidelines on diagnosing autism which is a big hefty thing and much more robust than
our state policy so if you are if you take that as your sort of professional guideline it actually gives you more in terms of what that should actually look like and it specifically says that there needs to be consideration of at least three things one is their social communication skills which is the kind of thing that the ADOS 2 evaluates but also specifically their cognitive ability so their IQ so it's very important to either have an IQ test that a psychologist or
psychological examiner is going to do or have some sense of that maybe they've seen one before you have it or you have their grades or you have something that's one of the things you're supposed to think about and the other is their language ability because that can play such an important role in the way we interpret somebody's communication and social interaction. So although I do think it's a little bit of a historical accident that speech paths have taken on this role in Arkansas, it actually is consistent with the way that national societies
want us to think about diagnosing autism, that language specifically plays a part. Now, of course, part of our job as the doctors to make sure they've had their hearing screened, but it doesn't necessarily say they all have to have audiology. you know what I mean? I think there is a scope of which professionals should be a part of that in professional guidelines. And then the other comment I have is the criteria for accessing these services. One is the two-provider rule and who the providers are. They're additional.
In addition to two providers, you have to have an autism-specific measure. You have to have an adaptive measure some of those things are like linked to the provider some are not but I wonder if the the part of the policy where it says you have to have an autism specific measure and then it lists in parentheses for instance in ADOS 2 if there's not some asterisk that could be put that basically says by somebody who knows what they're doing and we could figure out a word that later but it may not necessarily be the provider element of that policy that we
Speaker 63
44:30
have to that is the best way to go about addressing
Speaker 64
44:36
that problem which I know is not what you're here to talk about and I'm sorry I've hijacked the the conversation but this is such an important and interesting topic
Speaker 75
44:47
so anyway thank you for being here thank
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
44:50
you representative Rye you got a question yes sir I do it's kindly a statement senator you know this is a growing sickness and there's people that have died over the years that we didn't even know that this was going on i hope that we can come up
with an answer here that will be good for everyone because this is a growing sickness and we need more people that know more about this statewide yes thank
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
45:19
you mr mr senator let me in thank you representative rye for your comments um all right any further questions okay if none you're you're excused okay so next we have other business okay so we've got other business and so our two task
force members who are here i want to say thank you uh sorry about the we were going to be here on tuesday and then we're going to be here on thursday that was my fault um what i would say is i suspect this is a small community and you all know one another and i would encourage you to encourage the other members uh to be here at our next meetings and we will do our best to get them on the calendar and be firm about it and not so um dynamic um so what i would say is we still
need a discussion on fraud we're going to invite someone back next week i mean next meeting okay so we'll have someone from the attorney general um the office that will will be here as well obviously miss brisee you probably have some thoughts on that too i hope i'm saying your name close enough anyhow um then what my thought is and i want to hear from representative of in it and the the two of you if you have thoughts is we're at the point now where we're roughly six
months until the next general assembly and so we better figure out what we want in our reports and what we want as far as potential legislation um and that's why i would encourage the other members to be here because you know we're i don't think we're just going to have presentations i think we're going to actually have to start talking about this is our you know our priority one two three four and five obviously we're going to look at updating representative in it was not here at the moment but we're going to look at updating our task force membership because there seem to be
some some changes that maybe people are unavailable so that said either either of y'all have anything to add or discuss inside representative in it you've got any comments thank you co-chair
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified
47:38
boyd Senator Boyd I do apologize for being late I had a meeting with the data center so very important but not as important as this meeting um I do agree with Senator Boyd uh we are winding down
this year and um if the task force had any suggestions on what we need to do to bring up in the 2027 um session uh we need to get working on that and I'm a willing participant and I would like to thank Senator Boyd for being here for holding it down for me while I was gone and for Kristen who keeps us um she keeps us together so anyway I want to thank everybody for being here thank you so Dr.
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
48:23
Scott Mr. President either of you have anything to add before we on on other
business. All right. So we are ready
to adjourn. Okay. With that said, we are adjourned. Thank you.
Agenda
A. Call to Order
B. Consideration of a Motion to Approve April 1, 2026, Meeting Minutes [Exhibit B]
C. Discussion of Task Force Vacancy Procedures [Exhibit C1-C3]
D. Presentation on Developmental Disabilities Provider Association (DDPA) [Exhibit D1-D2]
E. Discussion to Propose an Amendment to Act 656 of 2021 to include Licensed Psychological Practitioners [Exhibit E1-E3]
F. Other Business
G. Adjournment
Documents
No documents posted.
Speakers
Senator Justin Boyd
Unverified
Speaker 10
Speaker 11
Leah Henderson
Unverified
Speaker 16
Speaker 18
Speaker 34
Speaker 32
Speaker 31
Speaker 45
Speaker 46
Speaker 48
Speaker 54
Speaker 47
Speaker 61
Speaker 64
Speaker 63
Speaker 75
Representative Johnny Rye
Unverified
Representative Denise Jones Ennett
Unverified