We welcomed John Collins to the Board of Directors this fall for many reasons, but one of them was his overall passion and dedication to everything he does.  He puts his whole heart into it which is a requirement around here at Ruby’s Rainbow and we love him so!  I asked John to do a guest blog  post on something he is passionate about: Educating first responders about people with special needs.  It is something that is greatly needed and he even created a program to help educate them.  Here is more from John…

 

My name is John Collins and I am the secretary for Ruby’s Rainbow. I got involved with this group as my daughter, who is currently 11, also has DS and our two families really hit it off.

john

John with his daughter Sabine.

My wife and I both a firm believers in the power of information and education and support the overall mission of this group with all my heart. Aside from this organization I am an active duty fireman with the City of Round Rock for the last 15 years. In the fall of 2015 I created a program that every first responder (fire department, EMS, paramedic) had to take with the subject covering “How to interact with individuals with special needs”. It is a 4 part series covering different diagnosis with the first section being only about those with Down Syndrome. In the fire service we constantly train over all sorts of things medically related but have never given this area much time. Not sure if it just got overlooked or if people were not sure what exactly to say. Either way, we are changing that. While it is great that so many more parents are taking it upon themselves to become more involved and aware of the particulars of their child’s diagnosis, the information can’t just stop there. From a firefighter standpoint, if something were to happen to one of our loved ones that we needed to call 911 for, the parents, as well meaning as they are, often become more of a distraction to the scene than a source of information. I know I would too if it was my own child. This is why the community that most often responds to these types of things has to become better educated about what we might be walking into and know a few other “quick tips” for things that we should also be paying attention to. The eventual goal would be to push this out nationally, but I have to make sure that the program is done well enough to make that a reality, so for now we start locally.

 

This is just the first post that I will be writing about this topic and others as we move throughout the year, be sure to check back each month to see what all the board members are working on as well as there are some amazing people that I get to call friends on this team.

 

Till next time,

John