(upbeat music) - Folks, you are about to see an interview that my colleague Jacqui Tricari did with my sister Michele Adubato.

Not about being my sister, but my sister Michele is in fact the CEO of the North Ward Center and founder of the Center for Autism.

There was an event at the North Ward Center, a night of learning and celebration, Night of Hope 2.

All about autism, about who's dealing with autism, not just those who are facing it individually, but their families as well.

Michele Adubato knows the issue well and Jacqui Tricarico had an in-depth, compelling conversation with her.

Let's check it out.

- Hi, I'm Jacqui Tricarico on location at the North Ward Center here in beautiful Newark.

And I am joined by Michele Adubato who is the CEO of the North Ward Center and the founder of the Center for Autism.

Michele, we're here for a really important event tonight.

It's called The Night of Hope 2.

Describe it for us.

- Wow.

Night of Hope.

Night of Hope 1 was huge.

And we did that about seven years ago and we changed policy.

We changed the stars to many people with autism changing the way funding comes down for people with autism on the state level with the statewide transition plan.

So when we thought of what we should do it was immediately clear to me and Suzanne Buchanan that it needed to be healthcare.

Okay?

So Night of Hope 2 is a celebration also because here's the thing about hope.

Hope needs to be a verb.

We can't just stand around and sit around and say, oh I hope something's gonna happen.

We have to make something happen.

So you hear the music, you hear the crowd.

We also wanna bring energy to this.

Okay?

And celebrate our community because it's a very difficult there's a lot of difficult things that people with autism and their families have to deal with and so one night, let's come together.

Let's come together and say we are together.

- Right.

And, and you mentioned healthcare as the major theme here.

There's been a lot of studies that have reported that healthcare professionals just aren't given the resources, the proper training to be able to effectively and efficiently take care of people with autism.

When they're coming into any healthcare setting really; dentist, eye doctor, or whatever it might be.

What do you think really needs to be done to make it an industry standard for healthcare professionals to be trained the proper way?

- So I think, unwittingly, the healthcare profession has created a situation like every other situation where people that are different don't, it doesn't actually work for and that's probably most people.

So what happened with healthcare especially after the pandemic and during the pandemic, we saw this, just getting vaccines we're just so hard.

People take for granted a shot.

Okay?

How hard?

It's very hard.

- There needs to be trust there, right?

- Trust.

There needs to be consistency.

There needs to be, you know, faith in this is gonna be okay.

And also when you have cognitive, a cognitive disability it's also about the understanding of what's happening to you.

And so Night of Hope 2 is about purpose and joy.

The purpose being that we really do want to ignite a seat change of how our professionals think about how to deal with people with autism.

I'm gonna give you an example.

Last night, one of our members from Hope House needed to go to the hospital and - (Jacqui) Hope House is?

- Hope House is the first permanent group home for people with autism in Newark.

And we opened it and we're very proud of that and going on to Hope House 2.

So we're very excited.

- (Jacqui) Great.

- And so she needed to go to the hospital.

- She's fine.

- (Jacqui) Good.

- I called the doc.

I said, listen Doc, we need help.

Please don't have her wait.

She's nervous.

They took her right in Clara Maass, wonderful hospital.

- (Jacqui) Yeah.

- Took her right in, made her feel comfortable.

And she was home within two hours.

Don't take that for granted.

That was a huge thing that happened.

- (Michele) And - Not always the usual circumstances.

- (Michele) Right.

Yes.

- And is that where tonight too, this Healthcare Pledge, or you're asking everybody to sign, the legislative leaders, the healthcare leaders, you're asking to sign this Healthcare Pledge.

What does that mean?

- The Healthcare Pledge is simply saying, listen there's autism friendly practices that I think that are easy to do.

It doesn't cost any money.

It's about changing perception and changing the way you may do certain things.

We actually have a doctor that's one of our Hope Heroes tonight.

- Yeah.

Dr. Jennifer LeComte.

- Absolutely.

She does that with their practice.

And even Billy the Barber.

- (Jacqui) Yes.

- Who is part of this, our community, has changed his entire practice to work with people with autism.

These are the kind of things and these are the kind of things we wanna celebrate.

- And you're celebrating both of them tonight with the Hope Hero Award, and I know they're really looking forward to that.

- (Michele) Yes.

- Talk about too, Michele, you know, autism has been such a passion of yours to give back to the autistic community, but things really shifted and changed for you and your family when Sebastian was born into the family.

- A hundred percent.

- Talk about Sebastian and how that's really changed the way you're doing things here.

- (Michele) I thought I knew a thing or two about autism.

- Yeah, of course.

- Sebastian came along and taught me again.

So, I mean, I have been an autism advocate for over 30 years.

And a lot of people would say, Michele, why?

Why?

I said, listen, I was a special ed teacher, social worker, principal.

Really just understood and loved our community because they're just so authentic and they needed our help and needed and it's just something I attached to.

When Sebastian came along, it was an eye-opening experience because until you experience that from a from a family perspective, which I thought I knew because I could go home on the weekends.

So I did my thing and I was able to relax on the weekends.

With Sebastian, who we love so much, it's a 24/7.

Even he's here tonight and he wanted an ice cream cone.

We gotta get that to him first.

And and there's certain regiments that he's into that we have to recognize.

So really the reason why healthcare came about was because of Sebastian.

Because he got sick, he got strep throat something that you take medicine for, right?

So you take antibiotics, Sebastian wouldn't take the antibiotic.

And he got sicker and sicker until I said, listen we need to take him to the hospital.

We took him to the hospital.

I got my little, you know, you need to see him.

- (Jacqui) Yeah.

- They got him right in and instead of taking a pill they gave him an injection.

Okay.

Now that injection was tough, but it was one injection and - And done.

- (Michele) He was good for two days.

- He knew he was gonna get better.

- These are the small changes.

- (Jacqui) Right.

- That and you know what the doctor said to us which I thought was wonderful, he looked at us and he said, okay, he's not doing this, how can we help?

And we kind of work together with the doctor - Which is so important.

Cause you've said before that the healthcare industry, legislative leaders even, they need to stop putting it back on the parents and the caregivers.

Because what we really need is them to take the initiative, them to take the steps to make it easier for the caregivers and the families who too are a big part of this equation.

- So I say Disney, right?

- (Jacqui) Yeah.

- Disney makes all types of accommodations for families with autism, but we don't do it in our healthcare system.

And Disney has it right, because you know what, it's not about cutting that line.

It's about helping that young person who can't wait, who does, who does not have the ability to say, wait I'm gonna wait, you know, a couple hours to be seen.

And if we could just make those shifts it's almost inhumanity and how we treat each other, and I think we're gonna be a better community for it.

That's what this night is about.

- Definitely.

- Thank you Michelle.

We're really looking forward to the rest of the evening.

Thank you for letting us be a part of it.

- (Michele) Absolutely.

- Thanks Michelle.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

Prudential Financial.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

PSE&G, RWJBarnabas Health.

Let'’s be healthy together.

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

PSEG Foundation.

And by NJM Insurance Group.

Promotional support provided by Insider NJ.

And by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

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