Guest guest Posted May 5, 2006 Report Share Posted May 5, 2006 My son did a disappearing act on Tuesday at his sister's softball game. I thought I was going to have a heart attack! I'm going to look into this! Anne -- Project Lifesaver Hello! I wanted to spread the news to all of you who have ever spent time looking for your lost child. My son who will be 5 next month has autism and is non verbal. This morning disappeared on us in the 2 minutes that I wasn't watching him. Long story short, he was found by police 30 minutes later about 5 blocks away playing at a park by himself. I know I am not the only one out there who has had this experience. We have extra locks on all our doors and still it can happen. What I want to let you all know about is a fabulous tracking device that some police departments used called " project lifesaver " . This was originally developed to use on people with Alzheimers, but now they are also using it for nonverbal children with autism, since they like to escape and they have no fear. This is a wrist band kind of like what you would get at a hospital. Once it is on, it only can come off by cutting it off. On it is a transmitter type device that emits a signal. If your child is missing, you can call up the police and they bring their special tracking device out and it will pick up the signal of your child. They can even use helicopters to get the signal if they get many miles from where they last were. Please check out the website for this at projectlifesaver.org. I know some of the police departments in the Dallas and Ft Worth area are using this. This device can save lives and as parents, our sanity. I never knew anything like this existed until today and I am happy to say that my son now has his special wrist band on (which he isn't too happy about), and if he ever goes missing again, I will not feel so helpless. Thanks for taking the time to read this! Texas Autism Advocacy www.TexasAutismAdvocacy.org Texas Disability Network Calendar of Events www.TexasAutismAdvocacy.org Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 5, 2006 Report Share Posted May 5, 2006 I am so disappointed that this has happened again to someone else. Matt escaped our house in Feb 2005. We have a project lifesaver device also called care track. I wrote about this is great depth and occasionally I mention this event again on this list. We should all stop thinking about if our children will escape and think about when. If you have a non verbal child who does not come when he or she is called you must have one of these devices. The next thing you can expect is that child protective services will be contacting and investigating your " neglect " now that he has slipped away. How could you not know about this device? Say you didn't think you needed it, but you cannot say you didn't know unless you just started reading this list I suppose. I have failed in my warning and I am sorry. The ION kids watch doesn't work for us; it's not waterproof and has other issues with convenience for the parent. I have some trouble with the care track device going off when it isn't supposed to and it has something to do with the frequency of the transmitter but for the most part this is a wonderful piece of mind. Trina Project Lifesaver Hello! I wanted to spread the news to all of you who have ever spent time looking for your lost child. My son who will be 5 next month has autism and is non verbal. This morning disappeared on us in the 2 minutes that I wasn't watching him. Long story short, he was found by police 30 minutes later about 5 blocks away playing at a park by himself. I know I am not the only one out there who has had this experience. We have extra locks on all our doors and still it can happen. What I want to let you all know about is a fabulous tracking device that some police departments used called " project lifesaver " . This was originally developed to use on people with Alzheimers, but now they are also using it for nonverbal children with autism, since they like to escape and they have no fear. This is a wrist band kind of like what you would get at a hospital. Once it is on, it only can come off by cutting it off. On it is a transmitter type device that emits a signal. If your child is missing, you can call up the police and they bring their special tracking device out and it will pick up the signal of your child. They can even use helicopters to get the signal if they get many miles from where they last were. Please check out the website for this at projectlifesaver.org. I know some of the police departments in the Dallas and Ft Worth area are using this. This device can save lives and as parents, our sanity. I never knew anything like this existed until today and I am happy to say that my son now has his special wrist band on (which he isn't too happy about), and if he ever goes missing again, I will not feel so helpless. Thanks for taking the time to read this! Texas Autism Advocacy www.TexasAutismAdvocacy.org Texas Disability Network Calendar of Events www.TexasAutismAdvocacy.org Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 6, 2006 Report Share Posted May 6, 2006 >This device can save lives and as parents, our sanity. I never knew anything like this existed until today and I am happy to say that my son now has his special wrist band on (which he isn't too happy about), < Tristan will not wear anything on his wrist or around his neck. We discussed this at the ARD meeting also. They are going to start working on him wearing something attached to his belt loop that slips into his pocket and eventually him accepting carrying a wallet in his pocket with an ID explaing his disabiltiy and contact info in case he gets away and lost. Can the GPS device be attached to something like that? Will CLASS pay for this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 6, 2006 Report Share Posted May 6, 2006 The officer that set us up on the program told me that one of the little boys who uses this has actually chewed through all of his wristbands. Now they pin it somewhere on his clothes and that seems to be working. This is much more effective than just having some type of id on your child because this will actually help the police locate the child. When my son wandered off the other day, he had his backpack with him that had all of his information inside as well as a lunch incase he got hungry. I think he had this all planned out : ) The problem is that even though he walked himself to a neighborhood park and there were other moms there with their kids, nobody thought to pay attention to a little boy playing all by himself. You can not count on someone to pay attention enough to see if your child has identification on them. Of course it is always a great idea to have information on them, just incase. But, like I said, the id only helps if someone notices that your child is unsupervised. As for the funding, I am not sure if you could get it covered, but it definitely would be worth checking into. : ) > > >This device can save > lives and as parents, our sanity. I never knew anything like this > existed until today and I am happy to say that my son now has > his special wrist band on (which he isn't too happy about), < > > Tristan will not wear anything on his wrist or around his neck. We discussed this at the ARD meeting also. They are going to start working on him wearing something attached to his belt loop that slips into his pocket and eventually him accepting carrying a wallet in his pocket with an ID explaing his disabiltiy and contact info in case he gets away and lost. Can the GPS device be attached to something like that? Will CLASS pay for this? > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted May 10, 2006 Report Share Posted May 10, 2006 We have this device. Matt has it on his ankle. He would have chewed it off if he was that limber. Did you know the straps come in different materials? We had a tough vinyl like one and now a woven strap kind of like what tie down straps are made of. Matt tried to get this device off for 2 days and then gave up. He saw me cut it off with scissors to replace the battery so he did this to. (oops)! We took all the movies away each time he did this and he leaves it alone now. He even brought me duct tape once to put it back together so he wouldn't lose his movies, but that’s another story! This device works well. What I like most is it's on 24/7 and it's waterproof. No remembering to take it off and on. We have some trouble with the transmitter that we are trying to work out they think it's the fire station tower down the street. I can set a perimeter around my house usually about 50 feet so if he's not in sight and the lights blinking I know to look inside the circle. This device (also sometimes called caretrack) is truly wonderful. Don’t wait for your child to go missing to find out about it. Trina Re: Project Lifesaver The officer that set us up on the program told me that one of the little boys who uses this has actually chewed through all of his wristbands. Now they pin it somewhere on his clothes and that seems to be working. This is much more effective than just having some type of id on your child because this will actually help the police locate the child. When my son wandered off the other day, he had his backpack with him that had all of his information inside as well as a lunch incase he got hungry. I think he had this all planned out : ) The problem is that even though he walked himself to a neighborhood park and there were other moms there with their kids, nobody thought to pay attention to a little boy playing all by himself. You can not count on someone to pay attention enough to see if your child has identification on them. Of course it is always a great idea to have information on them, just incase. But, like I said, the id only helps if someone notices that your child is unsupervised. As for the funding, I am not sure if you could get it covered, but it definitely would be worth checking into. : ) > > >This device can save > lives and as parents, our sanity. I never knew anything like this > existed until today and I am happy to say that my son now has > his special wrist band on (which he isn't too happy about), < > > Tristan will not wear anything on his wrist or around his neck. We discussed this at the ARD meeting also. They are going to start working on him wearing something attached to his belt loop that slips into his pocket and eventually him accepting carrying a wallet in his pocket with an ID explaing his disabiltiy and contact info in case he gets away and lost. Can the GPS device be attached to something like that? Will CLASS pay for this? > > > > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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