STORYTELLING SPOTLIGHT
Holding Hands and Jumping
By Shannon Turner Photography by Lynsey Weatherspoon
Columbus, Georgia (Senate District 29)
It’s Friday afternoon at Chattahoochee Scuba in Columbus, Georgia. Kaylee and Micah Asante are getting suited up, not for scuba lessons, but rather for swimming instruction and therapy. Kaylee, 10, and Micah, 16, both have autism. Jo Durst, who was recommended to them by Family Support at New Horizons Behavioral Health, slips into the pool and starts distributing toys to use during the session. “Are you ready? Are we going? Ready! Set! Swim!” Dorothy Asante adopted Kaylee and Micah after fostering them from different families. They have two other siblings as well. One is 25, and the other is Micah’s twin sister. Their autism is suspected to be a result, at least in part, from fetal alcohol syndrome. In Micah’s case,
testing at the Marcus Autism Center revealed a deletion of the short arm of chromosome 16. Dorothy says that both Kaylee and Micah need speech therapy, but obtaining timely and needed services has been one of her greatest struggles with the school system. Micah and his twin sister, Michelle, first came to live with Dorothy when they were just a few months old. That first time, she had them until they were three. Then, the courts decided to move them to another state to live with distant family members. Because they suffered some trauma in that situation, the family returned them to the child protective services system and Dorothy took Micah and Michelle back in. Dorothy adopted them soon thereafter. A few years later, Kaylee came to live with them when she was a baby and was
Telling Our Stories paints a picture of the complex
systems of support that enable people with I/DD to live their best lives. Spanning Georgia’s 56 state senate districts, these stories feature at least one individual who resides in each district—allowing this project to become a vehicle of advocacy for Georgians living with I/DD.
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MAKING A DIFFERENCE MAGAZINE
adopted into family early on. The Asantes have been on the waiting list for Medicaid waivers since 2012. Dorothy is very grateful that a case worker at New Horizons walked her through the process of making the application, so it was less complicated than many others have experienced. Kaylee was moved to the short-term waiting list in 2017; Micah moved in 2018. Dorothy was diagnosed with a blood clot in her leg not long before the family was in a car accident in September this year. She’s been told that this change in their circumstance may help to move the children up the waitlist, but no change has been communicated so far. In the meantime, although there is a low cap on it, the family support program at New Horizons offers funding for
