More than 12,000 radio listeners throughout Cape Cod and southeastern Massachusetts heard about Latham Centers last weekend during Matt Pitta’s “Sunday Journal” program. Matt said the Sunday Journal has been a staple of weekend news and public affairs programming for over 40 years on Cape Cod. “Each week, we highlight an issue, topic or group that is connected to Cape Cod. The goal is to provide listeners with an in-depth look at an issue that rarely gets to happen in the quick-hit, sound-bite environment in which we now live.”
Latham’s Patrice Carroll, Director of PWS Services, and Katrina Fryklund, Director of National Outreach, welcomed the opportunity to be interviewed by Matt at Cape Cod Broadcasting Media’s Hyannis office. In the interview, Patrice and Katrina talked about Latham’s residential programs, with a focus on Latham’s world-renowned continuum of care for children and adults with Prader-Willi syndrome. “Typically, we share Latham’s good news through campus tours and on our website blog,” Katrina noted. “But thanks to Sunday Journal, we were able to share highlights of Latham’s life-changing services with thousands of people throughout the region.”
Matt asked Katrina to share with listeners – many of whom may have seen the sign for Latham School while driving down Route 6A — what Latham is all about. “Driving down 6A, often times people ask, ‘What’s behind those hedges?’ There is so much that happens behind those hedges!” Katrina said. “We are a school for children with complex special needs, and we specialize in Prader-Willi syndrome, or PWS… We have a caring group of staff who truly know about what’s going on with their diagnosis… In addition to the Children’s Program, we have an Adult Program.”
Patrice, a licensed social worker and expert on Prader-Willi syndrome who presents at national PWS conferences, provided a clinical overview. “Prader-Willi syndrome is a complex genetic disorder that’s caused from a loss of specific genes at conception, and that results in an individual who lives with a constant state of hunger; intellectual disabilities (most of the time), and behavioral challenges. It’s an extremely rare genetic disorder; it occurs in about 1 in 18,000 births… We are actually the largest provider of PWS services in the country.”
Patrice talked about why families of children with PWS from throughout the country seek admission to Latham’s residential program. “We accept children as young as 8. Typically, the person with Prader-Willi syndrome goes through the first 10 years of their life doing quite well in a typical environment at home with their family and with their school system. Between the ages of 10 to 13, you start to see some of the behavioral challenges emerge. And it’s at that point when families reach out to us and say that they’re looking for their child to be in an environment where they can be successful, where they can have relationships, where they can excel in school, and that’s really where we come in. This is a very complicated and very complex syndrome that makes it extremely difficult for them to live in the community in a typical family setting and be successful. So we are able to offer a quality of life that they simply can’t have living in a family environment.”
Latham provides an atmosphere and supports that allows students to thrive, Patrice noted. “These are individuals that can be so successful and can really make exceptional progress when they’re in the right environment, and that’s what Latham Centers does. We offer an environment that’s safe, and with staff that are knowledgable, and they are able to make great strides in life.”
Patrice and Katrina both spoke with passion about Latham Centers’ recently published video, “And they said my child would never…” Patrice said the video, available at LathamCenters.org, was produced to give hope to parents in the PWS community near and far. “There is so much information on the internet about Prader-Willi syndrome, and most of it is negative, and we want to change that narrative. These are children and adults who are loving, and sweet, and funny, and can be very very successful. And we want parents – especially parents of newborns who just got that diagnosis – to know that this diagnosis is not the end of the journey – it’s the beginning of it. And you will have a wonderful life with this child.”
The full Sunday Journal radio program, which first aired on January 15th, is available via Podcast at CapeCod.com in the News / Public Affairs sectionHERE. (A podcast is an audio or video digital-media file distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through RSS web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers).
Sunday Journal plays on the following stations at the following times:
