Cookbook to support autism treatment
Helping QuickStart
May 26, 2009
BY John Curry
Things are cooking to help youngsters with autism.
A new cookbook, “pocopazzo & friends”, has been compiled and published through the efforts of Emanuele and Angela Leonforte of pocopazzo restaurant in the Jackson Trails Centre in Stittsville. Proceeds from the sale of the $25 cookbook will be going to QuickStart, an organization formed in 2007 to bring about early intervention for children with autism through the funding of a new Getting Started Clinic.
It took Angela Leonforte only six weeks to put the cookbook together, collecting recipes not only from her own family and friends but also from six other restaurants, namely Cabotto’s Ristorante, Fratelli, La Cucina, La Porto A Casa, Newport Restaurant and Wildwood Steak & Chop House.
She quickly got on board to help support Quickstart after her own son Anthony was diagnosed with autism and she and her husband Emanuele made the commitment to help those who were, like themselves, caught up in a months-long wait just for a diagnosis, let alone the beginning of treatment.
It was through her son’s psychologist that she came to know about QuickStart and its founder Suzanne Jacobson of Kanata who had had a similar experience involving a grandchild. She had become concerned about the long waiting time for an assessment and diagnosis and then treatment. Her research had indicated to her that early intervention was key and yet it was not happening. She also realized that private therapy is expensive and wanted to try to ensure that every child would have the opportunity for early intervention help, regardless of the ability of a family to pay.
So, in 2007, Suzanne started QuickStart in partnership with the Ottawa Children’s Treatment Centre which is the agency through which children receive autism diagnosis. This meant raising money to fund a new Getting Started Clinic which opened in October, 2008 and currently operates one day a week. It is free and provides a preliminary screening to determine a child’s needs. It offers bilingual one-on-one consultation and group sessions to give children and their families the support and guidance needed and provides parents with ideas of how to work with their children at home while they wait for diagnosis and treatment. This early intervention service for children prior to a diagnosis is the only such pre-diagnosis service in Ontario.
This year Suzanne and QuickStart have a fundraising goal of $500,000 as she has a goal of expanding the clinic from one to three days a week, with 8 health care professionals on staff to help even more children and their families affected by the rampant occurrence of autism in today’s society. The cookbook will play a major role in helping QuickStart achieve this goal.
QuickStart itself is able to direct all of its fundraising dollars toward this goal as there are no administration or operational costs involved in its operation. Suzanne Jacobson covers any administration costs while the clinics are held in various available locations, eliminating any space requirements.
The “pocopazzo & friends” cookbook first went on sale on Mother’s Day weekend, selling out. More were quickly printed and Suzanne Jacobson, along with Emanuele and Angela Leonforte, were at Brown’s Your Independent Grocer in Stittsville last weekend, selling the cookbooks and spreading the word about QuickStart and, more generally, about the rampant situation regarding autism among children today.
The cookbook is going to be on sale at various grocery stores, restaurants, spas and other locations across the city of Ottawa.