Page 46 - Healthcare News July-August 2020

SPECIAL NEEDS CONT’D
based and covered topics such as social skills, relationships, and treating people differently, as in “how come we don’t treat our bus driver the same way we treat our mom?”
In short, Whole Children offers
a lot, so it was important to keep
it going — somehow — during the pandemic, Hooks said. The pro- gram was in between its winter and spring sessions when everything be- gan shutting down due to coronavi- rus. In the past, program activities were always scheduled after school hours, but now Hooks and her staff had to try something different.
“We decided to move some of our classes online because we knew kids would not be in school and their parents would have an even greater need to ensure they had something to do,” she said. It turns out she
was right.
From a Distance
Using a platform called Discord, children can participate in multi- player online games and talk to each other while a teacher from Whole Children monitors the
August plays Animal Crossing through the Whole Children online class.
“For young people with a disability, the pandemic
has been a perfect storm for putting them at risk for isolation, depression, and anxiety.”
for my son to be connected to this community of people who were equally as passionate about Animal Crossing,” Santos said. “He was able to share what he’d been building on the island and the characters who lived there. He wasn’t isolated anymore.”
Once the remote classes were up and running, Hooks and her staff began observing some encouraging dynamics in this new setting.
Please see Pathlight, page 59
group.
Around the time of the pan-
demic, August had begun playing Animal Crossing, an animated multi-player online game where each player has an island where they build and improve houses and interact with animal villagers on the island. For the most part, he
played the game alone. Then Santos heard that Whole Children was offering a remote class on Animal Crossing.
Joining the remote class and discussing the game with other players gave August a new sense of purpose.
“It really made a huge difference
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46 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM JULY/AUGUST 2020