The JUSTin HOPE Foundation has been helping Nevada families for nearly a decade.

"The JUSTin HOPE Foundation was inspired by our son Justin who has autism," said Carol Reitz, Co-Founder and Executive Director.  "So we started the nonprofit to help other families affected with neruodevelopmental disorders."

The nonprofit provides resources, programming and support for families all over the region.  For the last five years, they've been training first responders.

"It's incredibly important for first responders to know how to interact with people with developmental disabilities," said Maricela Gutierrez, Center Director for the Foundation.  "Some can be nonverbal, some can have distinct behaviors, so it's important for the safety of the individual and the first responder to know how to interact with them effectively."

The Foundation has helped train more than 3,000 first responders so far.

"It's for our first responders who don't know how to handle someone with Autism or anyone with developmental disabilities, and giving them the tools in order to do so," Reitz said.  "Someone with Autism, their first response when their house is on fire is to run back into that burning building.  So that's something we want to make sure first responders know, or police when they come across a situation where someone has a developmental disability, to take a step back and recognize, maybe there's something else going on, versus being on drugs or being psychotic."

The nonprofit helped pass legislation in the last session.  AB 129 mandates that first responders statewide go through this training.

"It was amazing," Reitz said.   "We didn't know what to expect and we were just so thrilled; it was a unanimous vote so we were happy to get that.  Now, we're working on a few different ways on how to roll out the program.   We're doing a train-the-trainer model;  there's no other way to get to 10,000 first responders in a year's time so we're doing the best that we can."

They're also working with dispatch centers to help alert emergency personnel as soon as they get the call.

"We also maintain a dispatch registry form  so individuals with special needs in the household can fill out that form and we send it to the departments," Gutierrez said.   "That pops up on the first responders screen so they know there's someone with special needs is in the home before they go into it."

The Foundation provides resources, family support and respite services as well.  

More information: https://justinhope.org/

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