A joint effort by Weyburn service groups to provide an autistic boy with a computer at home has paid off with very noticeable improvements in his behaviour, says his mother.

Yvonne McNeil's son Jordan is eight years old, and during the school year splits his time between St. Dominic Savio School and Queen Elizabeth School's developmental centre. Once a year he goes for an assessment of his progress at the Wascana Rehabilitation Centre, and the opinion at a recent visit was that a computer would be of great benefit to him.

Saskatchewan Education was then contacted, which in turn put the Saskatchewan Abilities Council in touch, and they came to assess Jordan at St. Dominic.

Their recommendation agreed that a computer would be beneficial, and they provided a recommended list of computer equipment totalling over $4,000.

"I went to Scott McLeod and Bob Smith of the Kinsmen Club, and he put me in touch with the Kinsmen Foundation, which Scott is also a board member of, and we applied to them," said Yvonne.

While she awaited an answer, she talked to a member of the SaskTel Pioneers, Evelyn Persson, and found out they have computers that are given to families that need them.

The Kinsmen Foundation didn't have quite enough funds to cover Yvonne's request, but through a joint effort with the SaskTel Pioneers, the foundation paid for a crucial part of the computer package, an Intellikeys package worth $1,153.

Dale Huff of the SaskTel Pioneers provided a printer, and fellow Pioneer Chuck Pachkowsky provided computer speakers, a keyboard and monitor, with both helping to provide several days of setup time.

In trying to install the program, they found the computer they initially wanted to use wasn't fast enough; another computer was donated by a computer dealer, and the group was back in business. Huff, Pachkowsky and Jordan's teacher aide, Bonnie Hoskins, spent several days setting the computer up and running, along with instruction on how to use the Intellikeys board.

The resulting improvement in Jordan's development has shown the efforts were well worth it, said Yvonne.

"It's really difficult to describe the freedom we have now. Jordan has a non-verbal form of autism, but he's gone from a vocabulary of four words to 50 words. Since he's gotten the computer the tantrums have been fewer and farther between," she said.

Part of the reason for his tantrums was frustration in not being able to communicate his wishes clearly enough, said Yvonne. The Intellikeys program is a big part of his progress, as it provides an outlet for Jordan to communicate with his mom or his teacher's aide. An overlay for the keyboard is provided, and a number of pictures or symbols are available for Jordan to use.

The main challenge in teaching Jordan is consistency, she said, with the need for the same thing to be taught at home, at Q.E. school and St. Dominic, by the speech-language pathologist and at Wascana.

"He's more like a normal child than we've had for seven or eight years. The computer has made a real difference to the rest of Jordan's life; now we're very optimistic of his future," said Yvonne, adding of the joint effort, "I love how the whole community came together to do this."