VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – Just in the last month, three children with autism drowned in Central Florida after eloping or wandering from their families.
Two of those incidents happened in Volusia County, and now, the sheriff’s office and nonprofit organizations are teaming up to try and prevent it from happening again.
Those who work with the autistic children told News 6 that many of them are attracted to water, and these teams also know they can’t put fences around all bodies of water in Florida. They’re going to take a two-step approach as part of their campaign.
The first will be from the Volusia Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Mike Chitwood said they are going to purchase Project Lifesaver bands that children can permanently wear and will work similarly to an ankle monitor, allowing deputies to track them in real-time if the parents call 911 saying the child ran.
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“The sheriff’s office is going to buy 100 of these devices, and the Community Partnership is going to buy 22 devices. They either fit on your wrist or they fit on the child’s ankle,” said Chitwood, “So God forbid if they’re near a body of water or whatever’s going on, we will be alerted to that. We are working right now to have the system outfitted in Air One because obviously Air One is up all the time.”
The sheriff said DCF is now screening Volusia families and already has 90 who want the bands for their autistic children. He said his office is going to spend about $35,000 on the technology and bands, and is working to get grants to sustain the costs of the technology going forward.
“I think sometimes having tragedy, and maybe that’s the legacy of Charlie and Waylon, is unfortunately, they’re not here anymore, but maybe they’ll do something that can help some of the kids,” he said.
The second step in the campaign is working with Halifax Health and Easterseals on a fundraising campaign that will help provide free drowning prevention and swim lessons for these children.
“There’s Easterseals’ platform Float for Life, which is specifically geared towards drowning prevention but there are other entities and organizations in our community that do the same,” said Bev Johnson, president of Easterseals of Northeast Central Florida. “We will make sure that people have access to those services at the end of the day, we have to we have to assume that children are going to find themselves to water, and we have to be able to react there.”
Several other Central Florida counties also offer assistance for families with autistic children. Click here for a county-by-county breakdown.
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