Gio's Garden resides on Parmenter and University and is a place for kids with special needs, birth through 6, with parents who have respite needs. Charlotte Deleste, news anchor in Madison, has a son, Gio, who has over 20 seizures/day. She needed help.
A group of parents met around the kitchen table and started talking about their need for a respite center. They found a house and opened in 2012. They’ve grown so much, it’s unbelievable.
Gio’s offers services for kids who don’t have a diagnosis yet. They might be too young or it’s a rare condition. They offer 3 hour shifts. While the kids are at Gio’s, they do a lot of therapeutic activities. For kids in wheel chairs, they work on balance, standing and reaching, building leg muscles; kids wth autism, they’ll work on social activities. How to get ready for a school program. Art, recreation and occupational therapy assistants. They also do goals based on PT, OT, Speech and Language.
Three events a year. $500,000/yr. budget. Events raise $200,000, private donors bring in much of the rest. They charge families $12.50/hr. to subsidize, but families who are financially strained are helped more.
Val thinks CBD oil is very effective. They’ve seen a significant reduction in seizures.
30% of the kids they serve have autism. Many of the kids are young and it might be too early to diagnose.
Gio’s help families with questions and paperwork to make sure they’re okay and have a direction.
They don’t do overnights. Short term respite is the term. Most families do three hour time chunks. They can only have eight children at one time. They have 70 children they serve each month.
In 2017, they started date night, Monday through Friday, where parents can bring the siblings of kids with special needs. Couples need time for themselves. Siblings really like coming in. It’s a house full of toys! They pair up with other siblings. Families give each other support. Gil’s has a closed Facebook group for parents where they can ask questions like, ‘my child won’t sit still; where can I take him to get his hair cut?’ They have an in-person support group where they can talk about different topics. They also do quarterly family events. They talk to families about how important to keep the relationship strong with the other children in the family.
Some families come in once or twice a week; some come in once or twice a month.
They work with families to find day care centers that work with special needs kiddos.
Out of their 70 families, 15 have two kids with special needs. One has three kids with special needs. Of the rest, maybe half don’t have siblings. They have single parent families. Whenever there’s a family that’s really struggling, they do whatever they can to help.
They have teachers come and observe kids at Gio’s. It’s a better way to show interaction with special needs kids getting ready for traditional schools.