Social Work Month Education Series

Posted on March 7, 2025

Back in January, I was emailed an invitation from a representative at Penn State Health to give a presentation for their social work education series. They wanted me to talk about how to run an adult autism support group. I was thrilled to be giving such a talk since I do run a group known as “Spectrum Friends.” I was asked to do this also because of my reputation as a well-known autism self-advocate and my two advocacy awards to my name. Spectrum Friends was started many years ago as a split off of the Greater Harrisburg Autism Society Chapter back around 2009 or 2010 and continues to be funded by them. When the group was started, I was one of three people in that group. There was only one other male and a female, and the head of this group was Georgia Rackley. This group was started because the Autism Society felt there was a great need for this group due to the large amount of young autistic individuals in the area and the lack of other resources. At the beginning, Georgia just wanted us to get to know each other. Then maybe a year later, she wanted others to know about us so I volunteered to figure out a way to get our group out there.

I came up with an idea of having people in the society come to our monthly meetings and give presentations to our group, and get to know us. Looking back, I think I was a little in over my head because I had no idea how I was going to recruit people to come to our meetings. So, I ended up just sending out email invites to important people who worked in the autism field. I feared that no one would respond to these email invites, but lo and behold, after a little while someone did accept my invite to one of our meetings. I do not remember who that was, but that is history now because after so many years I have gotten pretty close to 100 different guest speakers to attend. After several years as the head of Spectrum Friends, Georgia Rackley retired and Chris Previc and Samantha Christ took over.

Our group also started going on monthly trips. Over so many years we have gone to many places like museums, picnics, swimming, amusement parks, tourist attractions, and movies, which was all paid for by the Greater Harrisburg Autism Society. Today the group has about 20 active members. After both Samantha and Chris went on to other things, I was chosen to take over as head of the group in 2017. To join the group, you must be 18 years old and have an autism diagnosis. If you are interested in joining the group, you can email me at tfh61@yahoo.com, or you can just come to our group meeting. The meetings are held the 2nd Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm. They are at the Giant Supermarket in Camphill, PA in the Beverly Room in the Community Center on the 2nd floor. We do have a group website “Oasis” to share things and talk with each other. When you join the group, one of our group helpers will get you on the website.

It is now 2025 and I have been running the group for 8 years at this point. I am now 64 years old and I plan to retire at the end of 2025, at least that is my hope, but I am willing to stay on as the head of the group until someone else is found to take over. I do lots of other things in the autism field. I am currently a 13 year board member of the Greater Harrisburg Autism Society board, an advisor for Self-Advocates United as 1, a community advocate for the P.H.A.S.E.S Autism Medical Research project for the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute, a community member of the ASC Autism Research project out of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a blogger for the ASDNEXT website, a member of an autism/disability podcast group, part of an employment innovative workgroup that is run by the Office of Developmental Programs, a member of a self-advocate network run by the Pennsylvania Developmental Disability council and lastly, I also belong to a Philadelphia employment forum.