DUBAI // A multimillion-dirham centre to help hundreds of autistic adults and children is due to open next week.
The Doris Duan-Young Autism Centre aims to provide early intervention, speech and behavioural therapy, and vocational training for people with conditions across the autistic spectrum.
The centre in Dubai, which cost more than US$1 million (Dh3.67m) to set up, has the capacity treat up to 100 adults and children, said Doris Duan-Young, 43, its founder and president.
The centre will also provide in-home services for hundreds more, which will make up most of its work.
“I think the UAE really called for us,” said Ms Duan-Young.
A focus of the centre, will be to help adults with autism. When a child reaches adulthood they need to learn social skills to prepare them for further education or employment, but there has been little such assistance available, said Ms Duan-Young.
Staff at the centre hope to close that gap, said the American who is a best-selling author, member of the Clinton Global Initiative and an internationally known ambassador for those with autism.
“There is not an adult centre like this of its kind that we have seen that takes adults aged 16 and up,” Ms Duan-Young said.
“With a centre like what we have, I know lives can be completely changed. Just to be able to teach people how to communicate without frustration.
“I have people who have had to wear arm splints because they bite themselves, so we teach them how to cope with the frustration of life. A lot of clients can live a normal and independent life.”
The centre will officially open on April 2 in Dubai Healthcare City and will include play and sensory rooms, theatre for imaginative play, space for group and single therapy, and a quiet room.
There will also be adult-specific rooms which will include a media room, areas for job training and “living space” to teach those with a more severe form of the spectrum disorder some simple life skills, such as grocery shopping and how to make a bed.
“It is beautiful. It is absolutely state of the art,” said Ms Duan-Young.
Once operational, more than 80 staff will be employed at the centre.
Autism is a range of developmental disabilities that affect social and communication skills and last throughout a person’s life.
There is no accurate statistics on the total number of people with autism in the emirate, but experts estimate it is similar to global prevalence.
About one in 88 children has been identified with an autism disorder according to latest estimates from the Centres For Disease Control and Prevention of Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network. Other studies have suggested the prevalence is higher.
Ms Duan-Young said a colleague who had lived in the UAE told of the need for more local autism services, which prompted her to act.
It will be the only centre that she has set up outside the Unites States and she said there was already a waiting list.
“I don’t think there is anything like this here,” she said. “We studied every centre when we were last here. We have not found one that is able to do what we are able to do for the community.”
A disabled aunt inspired her to work with autism, said Ms Duan-Young. She set up her company in 1999 and has since helped more than 25,000 families or children coping with autism.
“Our goal is to go touch more than 100 countries over the next 10 years because autism is really on the rise,” she said.
Ms Duan-Young intends to open a secondary centre in Abu Dhabi, then expand across the Middle East.
jbell@thenational.ae
