NeighborHeart™ was established to provide a better quality of life for children and adults with autism and other special needs by:

• Issuing Quality Of Life Grants to families that care for children and adults with autism and other special needs. These grants provide families with stipends that may be used for a wide variety of supports related to their family member.


• Fostering an ongoing campaign of Awareness & Compassion for all individuals with special needs. Individuals with special needs deserve the same respect as everyone else and we will strive to educate others who do not understand this mindset.

Quality Of Life Grants
After many years of attending and leading support groups and meeting others raising or teaching children with autism we identified the following points:

• No two children are alike - regardless of diagnosis.


• We all struggle with how to best help our children while balancing the financial burden, time constraints and keeping the family's quality of life on an even keel.

Many services are available through local school districts and government entities. Often, however, families require services that go above and beyond the available benefits. These additional services often cost tens of thousands of dollars annually and are not covered by insurance - thus placing the burden of payment directly on the shoulders of the caregivers. Some insurance companies even refuse to cover a person with autism. We have met many people that must pass on these services because the financial burden is too much to bear; they will never know if that therapy is the key to helping their child. Furthermore, this burden affects people of all incomes: below, at and even well above the poverty line.

Knowing this, we started offering Quality of Life Grants to reduce some of a family's financial burden and improve their quality of life.

Awareness and Compassion
So many people with disabilities (children and adults alike) are ostracized for the simple fact that they are different. Purposeful or accidental, segregation is still segregation. It is wrong and equally hurtful to the person being scorned and those that love and care for them.

For this reason, we have developed a program called Awareness and Compassion - to educate the community at-large about autism, address the stereotypes and to accept peoples' differences, no matter what they are.