How to Welcome, Include, and Catechize Children with Autism and Other Special Needs: A Parish-Based

Deacon Larry Sutton knows first-hand how important and rewarding catechizing children with developmental disabilities can be. In How to Welcome, Include, and Catechize Children with Autism and Other Special Needs, he provides bishops, pastors, DREs, and other diocesan and parish leaders with a guide for creating a program that addresses the needs of children with physical, developmental, and cognitive disabilities and welcomes them into the life of the parish.

How to Welcome, Include, and Catechize Children with Autism and Other Special Needs helps parishes:

• Understand disabilities—and abilities

• Build relationships with children with special needs?

• Provide one-on-one customized catechesis using existing resources

• Inspire teens to volunteer

• Revitalize, educate, and involve the entire parish

How to Welcome, Include, and Catechize Children with Autism and Other Special Needs provides the insights needed to build an effective faith formation program. By sharing stories of success and inspiration that affect everyone—pastor, parent, student, teenager, and teacher—he delivers the unexpected: that catechizing children with special needs actually nurtures the faith of the entire parish.

• The Adaptive Teacher: Faith-Based Strategies to Reach and Teach Learners with Disabilities
• ChurchMoney: Rebuilding the Way We Fund Our Mission (A Rebuilt Parish Book)
• Salt and Light: Church, Disability, and the Blessing of Welcome for All
• Deaf Diaspora: The Third Wave of Deaf Ministry
• Peace in the Storm: Meditations on Chronic Pain and Illness
• Welcomed and Valued: Building Faith Communities of Support and Hope with People with Mental Illness and Their Families
• Christ in the Classroom: Lesson Planning for the Heart and Mind
• Faith, Family, and Children with Special Needs: How Catholic Parents and Their Kids with Special Needs Can Develop a Richer Spiritual Life
• Spiritually Able: A Parent’s Guide to Teaching the Faith to Children with Special Needs
• Handbook for Adaptive Catechesis: Serving Those with Special Needs