fwd: [AutismOhio] Family with 3 autistic kids on 'Primetime'-Thursday Apr 22

[Guest guest]

forwarded from AutismOhio group.

The story of a Geauga County family with three autistic children, featured in a three-day Plain Dealer series last fall, will be aired this week on ABC's "Primetime Thursday" at 10 p.m.

After the Plain Dealer series, a "Primetime" crew spent two weeks in the Cleveland area, including four days at the South home of Sophia and Marc Augier. The couple's 5-year-old son and 4-year-old twin boys have autism.

ABC also spent time at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Autism, where the Augier boys receive intensive therapy known as applied behavioral analysis.

The segment will detail how the Augiers devoted "their lives and their savings to pursue a cutting-edge - and sometimes controversial - therapy for their sons in an effort to prevent them from slipping away forever into a world of utter isolation," an ABC news release said.

The show will also explore the Augiers' struggle to get the Chagrin Falls School District to pay for the children's therapy, the network said. The family pays more than $150,000 a year for autism services.

Parents of autistic children around the country have waged legal battles against schools. Public schools by law are obliged to educate developmentally disabled children as young as 3. But many districts are unable or unwilling to provide or pay for full-day behavioral therapy.

The Augiers are still in talks with the school district, Sophia Augier said Tuesday. Discussions "are going really well," she said.

Marc Augier, who was laid off in January 2003, was recently hired as a finance manager for Deloitte & Touche. The job offer was sparked by the newspaper series, he said.