Aug 30, 2018, Portsmouth, NH, Fosters: St. Charles begins new era in Rochester [NH] http://www.fosters.com/news/20180830/st-charles-begins-new-era-in-rochester St. Charles Children’s Home has served children in Rochester for generations, but this week the home officially embarked on its exciting new chapter as a full-time therapeutic school known as St. Charles School. The 1880s building, located on Grant Street across from Rochester Common, served as an orphanage and as a residential children’s home for 100 years until 2012 when it became a private service provider for area public school students with emotional, social and behavioral challenges. Seeing the need for a more specialized school that would allow those students more time and flexibility to work through their challenges and past traumas, Sister Mary Agnes Dombroski and her staff began the process two years ago to get licensed as a 24-student private school focused on special education. The state approved St. Charles Children’s Home’s transformation into St. Charles School in July, and the first classes under the new educational structure began this past Tuesday. Dombroski, the school’s executive director, said the change is exciting because she and her staff can now fulfill what they believe is their ethical obligation to ensure students aren’t moved back into public school classrooms before they’re ready. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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