Hey {{ FirstName | default: 'Friend' }} - in this email we will share:
- So many DSHN Partner Events!
- Spotlight on Adagio House
- July is Disability Pride Month
- Youth Advisory Board Connection
- Tips for Staying Safe in the Heat
- Books Written by Disabled Authors
- Upcoming Events
You can always connect with DSHN in other ways, too:
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DSHN Partner Events
Check out all these trainings, workshops, support groups, summer camps, gatherings, and more!
All brought to you by DSHN's very own partner organizations!
Parent Educational Advocacy Training Center (PEATC)
In collaboration with DSHN, PEATC is providing trainings to youth with disabilities, and their parents/guardians, that address sexual health, pregnancy, STIs, and consent, among other relevant topics. PEATC is adapting Mad Hatter Wellness's youth curriculum as well as creating the parent training and supplemental materials.
Let's Talk About Sex
- This is a virtual sexual health and wellness workshop for parents/guardians of youth with disabilities in Virginia
- This training has 2 sessions on consecutive days. Registrants should plan to attend both sessions.
- This training will provide information for parents/guardians and offer practical tools and strategies you can use along your child's journey to adulthood. The information gained will help your youth with a disability develop self-care skills, cultivate social skills, gain an understanding of appropriate behaviors, increase personal safety, and work toward becoming a more independent adult.
- July 20 & 21, 6-8pm EST
- PEATC Parent/Guardian workshop registration
Youth Sexual Health and Wellness Workshop Series
- This is a virtual sexual health and wellness workshops for youth with disabilities in Virginia
- This training is a 5 session workshop series.
- This training is designed to increase an individual's capacity for self-advocacy and decision making. Throughout the 5 sessions we will cover important topics including: setting and respecting boundaries, consent and body rights, safe and healthy behaviors, and public vs private body parts, places, and behaviors.
- August 1, 8, 15, 22, & 29, 6-8pm EST
- PEATC Youth workshop registration
Parent and Youth Engagement Summit
- This in-person summit is an exciting opportunity for youth with disabilities (ages 12-22) and their parents to gain valuable information from topic experts and exhibitors, and to network and connect with other families. Youth and parents will leave this summit empowered by the experience and better able to advocate for their future.
- This year's summit will include some great info for building sexual health and wellness skills for youth with disabilities.
- August 6, 8am-2:30pm EST
- Great Wolf Lodge, Williamsburg, VA
- PEATC Summit website
Special Education Workshop Series
- This is a live, virtual workshop series for parents and professionals who want to learn more about special education in Virginia. Join one or more workshops.
- July 6, 6:30pm EST; Dispute Resolution Options in Virginia
- PEATC SPED Workshop Registration
Waze to Adulthood
- During this online, interactive training, you will learn ways to use your self-advocacy skills to plan for the future you want. We will discuss how to be a great self-advocate when it comes to planning for the future when attending IEP meetings. Choose one of the three dates that will work for your schedule!
- For students with disabilities age 12-22 who live in Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Georgia ONLY
- July 13, 10:30-11:30am EST
- July 13, 6-7pm EST
- July 13, 6-7pm EST
- PEATC Waze registration
PACL Training
- An exciting opportunity for parents who are familiar with the world of special education (your child has been involved with special education for at least 4 years).
- Research based training to provide parents of children with disabilities the information and resources needed to become active leaders in policy development and evaluation. This is a 3 day in-person event.
- July 20-22; Roanoke, Va
- PEATC PACL training
Autism Society of Central Virginia (ASCV)
In collaboration with DSHN, ASCV is implementing developmentally- and age-appropriate, evidence-based relationship and sexual health education for autistic youth in 4th and 5th grade.
Summer Camps
- The Autism Society of Central Virginia is hosting summer camp! Camps for elementary themed sessions and teen sessions available. Camps will be held in Glen Allen, Va
- 4 weekly sessions available, with the first week beginning July 18
- ASCV Summer Camp
Young Adult Social Group
- The Autism Society of Central Virginia offers a virtual social group for young adults (18-25) with autism. This group provides opportunities for attendees to engage with other adults on the spectrum encouraging positive social interactions, fostering new relationships, and promoting belonging and acceptance.
- July 11, 6-7pm EST
- ASCV Social Group
Caregivers of Young Children Support Group
- The Autism Society of Central Virginia offers a virtual peer-facilitated support group for caregivers who have a child in preschool or elementary school on the autism spectrum. Ask questions, share resources, and connect with other caregivers.
- July 20, 6-7pm EST
- ASCV Support Group
Caregivers of Teens and Adults Support Group
- The Autism Society of Central Virginia offers a virtual peer-facilitated support group for caregivers who have a teen or adult on the autism spectrum. Ask questions, share resources, and connect with other caregivers.
- We will be joined by Ashlee Nemeth of ABLEnow
- July 25, 6-7pm EST
- ASCV Support Group
The ARCs
The ARC is a national organization with state, regional, and local chapters that support and advocate alongside individuals with developmental disabilities for full inclusion and participation in their communities.
Mini Golf Picnic
- The Arc of Harrisonburg and Rockingham invites you to enjoy a summer evening of fun, food, and friends as we gather to celebrate our 60th anniversary.
- July 18, 5:30-7:30pm EST; RSVP required
- Mulligans ADA approved golf center; Harrisonburg
- ARC Golf Picnic
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Spotlight on Adagio House
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Q & A with April Hepler, Executive Director, Adagio House
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Q What is Adagio House? Who do you serve?
A Adagio House is a nonprofit organization reimagining care through counseling, advocacy, relationships, and education regardless of ability, identity, or stage of life. It was created to serve caregivers, and very quickly we realized that if we were really going to serve caregivers well, we needed to be the best at serving their disabled loved ones. Our daily counseling caseload includes people from all walks of life, and our respite services support care for people with disabilities of all ages.
Q What services does Adagio House offer?
A Currently, we offer individual and group psychotherapy, as well as respite services. We are planning a day program for teens with disabilities to begin next summer, and have big dreams for expanding our services in the coming months and years.
Q What are the key values behind the work you do?
A We value healthy relationships, clinical expertise and continued learning, along with autonomy and interdependence. Healthy relationships include collaboration and mutual respect, kindness, and an easy balance between going out into the world to accomplish goals and coming back in to be with safe others who help to meet our more vulnerable emotional needs. Clinical expertise and continued learning means that all our therapists are grounded in a strong clinical background and we provide ongoing opportunities to learn from each other as well as other experts in the field. We believe our culture falsely places emphasis on independence while also stressing conformity to (often unspoken) expectations. Our emphasis on autonomy and interdependence means that we believe everyone does life in their own way, we all need supports of various kinds, and we all have something important to contribute to the larger community.
Q What is the importance of sexual health education for the work you do? How are you applying it to your work now?
A Sexual health is necessarily a part of healthy relationships, and is being interwoven throughout everything we do, from individual and group sessions, to how we structure respite care. We are continually working to learn more in order to serve our clients better.
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Q How are you incorporating sexual health into your therapy?
A After working with DSHN, we feel better equipped to have conversations with our clients on sexual health in both individual and group sessions. We have always taken a holistic approach, and healthy sexuality in naturally a part of who we are as humans. We are working to make sexual health part of each group we run, and welcome conversations in individual therapy.
Q What are you hoping to do/accomplish with your partnership with DSHN?
A As an organization, our primary goal in our partnership with DSHN was to increase competence in the area of sexual health and disability. We believe in the power of connection through group therapy, and felt sexual health would be an important topic to include with disabled teens and their parents. However, we have had the unexpected gift of getting to know other partners in the network and are so glad to begin nurturing those connections. It is balm to my soul to know so many other wonderful humans doing this work in their own fields of expertise.
If you would like information about therapy for you or your child, or just want to learn more visit Adagio House
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July is Disability Pride Month!
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Please reach out to dshn@jmu.edu to share resources that would be useful for folks in our network, or for more resources on any specific topic.
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Disability Pride Month aims to bring focus to the disability community to ensure their needs and wants are respected. Check out the following resources, stories, events, and volunteer opportunities to show your pride, or get involved in advocacy for the disabled community in your area.
NPR News Ending Sexual Abuse Starts with Sex Ed
- This article focuses on a community service wellness program for people with I/DD and enforces the power that Sex Education gives individuals to make decisions about their own bodies and have healthy relationships.
- NPR News
SIECUS Advocating for Inclusive Sex Ed
America's Disability Community Disability Pride & How to Display It
- Promotes Disability Pride Month as a chance to honor each person's uniqueness as a natural and beautiful part of human diversity
- America's Disability Community
Ameridisabilty Nationwide Directory
- This online, nationwide directory will help you find events, classes, trainings, and groups that focus on people with disabilities
- Directory of Nationwide Events
Braille Institute Workshops
- The Braille Institute is offering free, remote workshops for the blind and visually impaired
- Over 50 workshops to choose from, including topics like life skills, technology, arts, healthy living, and more!
- Braille Institute
For volunteer opportunities, contact:
Virginia Services Virginia
Volunteers centers are located throughout the state of Virginia to assist in building volunteer capacity in nonprofits and help individuals and groups find service opportunities that interest them.
Ability Center of Virginia
Volunteers needed for administrative tasks, special events, camps, job training, and more.
DLCV Virginia
The disAbility Law Center of Virginia seeks to advocate for all Virginians with disabilities. Help with administrative work, committees, advocacy, web design, and more!
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Youth
Advisory
Board
Connection
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A special thanks
to the wonderful youth of
Disability-inclusive Sexual Health Network's Youth Advisory Board
for providing content for this section of our newsletter!
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Disability Pride Made Visible
In this section two DSHN YAB member share aspects of their personal journey with Disability Pride. Disability Pride is an individualized journey, both invisible and visible, and not everyone has to show every second of the day. The aspects shown here are some visible ways that YAB members experience and share their own disability pride.
Comment from Amy Stone
Designing Adaptive Costumes:
One of the ways I display my disability pride is to create costumes where the wheelchair is a part of the design. I do this to encourage costume designers to create costumes that I don't need to get out of my wheelchair in order to put them on. I have been known to talk some costume designers into letting me take some pieces home so that I can use on my own equipment. Being able to design adaptive costumes has really helped me to express myself and brought out my pride in my creativity.
Service Dog Pride:
My service dog taught me the importance of disability pride in multiple ways. I got my service dog back when I did not have the greatest pride in my disability, and he has been an incredible part of helping me to build self-esteem and be confident in who I am. He was a conversation starter that helped me to build bridges with all different kinds of people. He also helped increase my confidence because I learned many of the complex skills needed to manage a service dog, building responsibility and trust for another living being, and building self-advocacy skills. I knew he would be a constant source of support in every situation, and a buddy whenever I just needed to chill. He helped me find things I was proud of within my disability.
Below are pictures of me with my service dog; and an example of a wheelchair friendly costume sheet I made.
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Comment by Spark Doyle
To personalize ourselves is to be human. People personalize everything that ties into their identity, be that the clothes they wear, the purses or backpacks they carry their belongings in, the food they eat. Even in schools that have uniforms, students will personalize their notebooks, their backpacks, their hair, anything they can to showcase their own identity and personalities. Disability is no different. It is common to choose glasses based off of size, shape, and color, and to fit lenses to them that match your prescription. When someone breaks their arm, they often get to choose the color cast they get, and let their friends sign it and draw on it. Even braces are often customized with colorful bands.
With disability pride, we embrace our disabilities and our equipment as part of our identities. We decorate and customize our equipment, choosing colors and patterns that suit our style. Some of us take it a bit farther, and add extras on to further customize our stuff. Entire styles of fashion have arisen from this, such as cripplepunk. Once you embrace your disabilities as something that isn't taboo or shameful, it's easier to customize your equipment. Instead of leaving the equipment plain and hoping it will blend into the background, we incorporate it into our aesthetic.
For me, I like several different aesthetics. I've decorated my wheelchair with rainbow spokes, and I decorated a cane for pride, buying a purple cane and gluing rainbow spikes to it, and adding a rainbow chain to the handle. I also have a blue cane I plan to decorate with faux pearls for a mermaid theme, and a pink cane I plan to decorate with a Sanrio theme. I puffy painted fun labels on my medical equipment, and wrapped my IV pole in lights for the holidays.
This style of customization is becoming more common. Disabled folks are painting and spiking and decorating and bedazzling their equipment. This may seem odd to abled people, who may be used to such equipment being hidden from sight or meant to blend into the background. But for us, it's part of our expression of our personalities, and a reclamation of pride. My disabilities aren't shameful, and I don't need to be hidden away. And neither does the equipment I use, be it mobility aids, IV equipment, my service dog, etc. Disability pride isn't about hiding our differences, but about celebrating and embracing them.
Below are pictures of my cane; Kawthornee's IV pole, picc line covers, wheelchair wheel covers, and IV bag stuffed animal covers; service dog vest, collar and leash accessories.
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Staying Safe Under the Sun
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Being outdoors has been proven to boost mood, improve mental health, and allows for greater opportunity for movement, which increases your physical health as well. Below are some tips for staying safe out there while enjoying your time under the sun.
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Water, water, water!
Your body loses more water during those hot, sunny days, so make sure to replenish often. Taking frequent sips throughout the day is a great way to ensure hydration.
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Shade
Temperatures can be up to 15 degrees cooler under shade. Utilizing shade if you are outside during peak sun hours is a great way to reduce the risk of heat stroke.
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Sunscreen
Pick a physical sunscreen like zinc oxide or titanium oxide, and avoid the chemical sunscreens. Follow directions for how much to use, and how often to reapply.
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It's all About Timing
Avoid the peak sun hours if you can. The safest time to enjoy the outdoors on a really hot, sunny day is early morning and late afternoon when the sun is lower in the sky.
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Check Out These Books Written by Disabled Authors
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Click on the underlined book title to learn more!
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Diary of a Young Naturalist
by Dara McAnulty
Written by a teenage, autistic naturalist and multi award-winning author. Dara is the youngest recipient of the RSPB medal and his work has received enormous critical acclaim, with this book being revered as achingly beautiful.
Twitter: @NaturalistDara Instagram: @dara_mcanulty
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Disability Visibility
by Alice Wong
This anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community.
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Every month we will highlight a few events relevant to disability-inclusive sexual health and education. Follow our Google Calendar to view these and many more events, updated often!
Are you aware of or hosting an event you think would be relevant? Send/forward event info to dshn@jmu.edu!
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ASAN Our Bodies, Our Rights
Virginia Summer Camps for Youth with Disabilities
- There are dozens of camps for youth taking place all over Virginia this summer catering to a wide variety of disabilities, including many different ages, interests, and skill. Check out the link below for a list of this summer's camps, as well as a list for other programs in Virginia this summer that focus on youth with disabilities.
- Virginia Summer Camps
Sex Positive Families Growing Into You!
- This live, virtual workshop for youth 8-12 yrs-old is a gender-inclusive, family-style virtual puberty workshop that help tweens and their trusted adults learn together about the many changes that happen during the tween years.
- July 9, 11am-1pm EST
- Sex Positive Families registration
Mid-Atlantic ADA Center Disability Rights are Human Rights
- This webinar will feature disability rights activist Judy Heumann, together with a speaker on the history of civil rights. They will discuss the ways the civil rights movement impacted and influenced the disability rights movement that began in the 1970s.
- July 14; 2-3:30pm EST
- ADA Center Webinar Registration
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