Mentor’s CARES House: Autistic Education Comes Home
Mentor, Ohio
For the 2024-2025 school year, Mentor Public Schools, which operates Mentor CARES (Cardinal Autism Resource and Education School) opened a unique learning environment to better serve students with autism. The CARES house is an authentic home environment used for teaching life skills to students outside of the classroom setting.
The CARES Program, was established in 2011 and while it makes a huge impact on the districts who use it, the program is relatively hidden from the broader community. The CARES Program regionally serves 16 school districts in Northeast Ohio and operates as a model for how autism education can be carried out.
In order to promote both the opening of their new house and the program itself, we partnered with Christy LaPaglia, the CARES Program director and Mentor Public Schools to develop a documentary and 20-page brochure on the program. After interviewing CARES Administrators, teachers, specialists and parents, we were able to shine light on the progressive work being done within the program. In addition, it spotlighted a new model for autism education, one that is authentic and translates to students’ home lives.
The emotional responses from parents were striking on camera, and by embedding with the teachers, students and their families over the course of the documentary production it was easy to see how impactful the program is in the lives of students.
The companion brochure was designed to introduce the program to state lawmakers at a critical time when the impact of special education needs advocacy. This brochure also introduced new families to the program and they could see whether they could benefit from this program.
The documentary, brochure and webpage were then distributed to over 15 autism partner agencies, including the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to raise the profile of CARES and their efforts.
Additionally, the material was formatted as a learning session and delivered at the Ohio School Board Associations Capital Conference in 2025. The documentary has been viewed over 1,000 times by our partner organizations and we have distributed over 5,000 printed copies of the brochure telling the story of this important program.
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