A nonprofit organization that supports individuals and families affected by autism has begun a survey to better prepare for the next hurricane season.

Family Initiative, Inc. President and Co-Founder David Brown said Hurricane Ian was unbelievably catastrophic and significantly impacted all the families they serve.

The storm opened the eyes of the whole team to the unique needs of special needs families in regard to hurricane preparation and recovery efforts.

Although nonprofits and faith-based folks in the community opened up food and water distribution sites directly after the storm, it provided a hardship for special needs families as they did not have the ability to wait in line for 45-minutes or longer.

Brown said pretty quickly after the storm their team started delivering food to their families, after pallets of food were dropped off by such entities as the Harry Chapin Food Bank. The next question –what the children would eat, as they would not eat everything.

Brown said in real time it was realized there were needs to think about moving forward to be better prepared for another storm — and what that would look like.

From those conversations, an idea of launching a survey to get a better temperature from the community was formed.

Family Initiative rolled out the Lee County/Family Initiative Autism Hurricane Response and Recovery Survey, a partnership with Lee County government.

“They are sharing the survey to the community and stakeholders. It’s a survey to understand the unique needs and organizationally how we can drive our priorities and listen to the community,” Brown said. “We are thrilled to get information and gather insight and move forward.”

This will help in becoming operational prepared: If another hurricane passes through, they will know exactly what they need to do and what resources need to be available.

The survey, made available in English and Spanish, can be found at surveymonkey.com, or fi-florida.org.

Brown said they are looking to close the survey at the beginning of March, so it gives them time to synthesize the results. They will share the results with community leaders at a city, municipality, county, and state level.

“We have communicated a lot with the state leadership to share our findings with them,” Brown said, adding that it would provide insight of what those needs might be.

Family Initiative Vice President and Co-Founder Anjali Van Drie said as they wrap up the results of the survey, it will be around the start of hurricane preparation. They will have data readily available throughout the summer to prepare a better plan to be as ready as they can be on day one.

Brown said insight and understanding from moms and dads will be a big help for guiding and shaping the needs of special needs families.

“The exercise spurs a lot more conversation and dialogue across the state,” he said regarding what special needs families need in sheltering and recovery considerations to get their needs met.

With the survey already launched, they are watching the results closely, Brown said, adding the early return of information has proven to be very insightful.

“We have seen already that over 90% of our families plan to ride out a category 2 or 3 in their home,” Brown said, adding that 30% have indicated they will ride out a catastrophic hurricane in their home. “That’s a pretty big number. Their intention is to sit in their home and ride that storm out. There’s insight you can take from that.”

Board of Directors member Jessica Van Hart said that number is so high because there is not a special needs shelter in the area.

“I would not take my son to a special needs shelter. He would not do well in that environment. Parents like myself cannot take my child to a shelter — we have to stay home and hope and pray that we make it through the storm,” Van Hart said.

She appreciates that everyone is having a conversation in the county.

“Our whole county has grown so much. There’s a greater need now to have the conversation about special needs shelters and trying to help families that don’t feel like they can bring kids to them, or leave their homes,” Van Hart said.

She said there are certain safety issues that arise that their kids need that she does not believe are in place at shelters.

Fortunately, during Hurricane Ian, Van Hart’s family was fortunate enough to stay at her husband’s business, an environment with which her son is both familiar and comfortable.

“It weighs heavy on me to think about families at home with their kids. I feel for other families that didn’t feel they could leave their homes and it was dangerous,” Van Hart said.

Van Drie said with the increase in autism — one in every 36 impacted — it is important to at least look at how they can help families be prepared for a storm.

“How can we prepare and respond after the fact to make sure they get their basic needs, additional needs” met, Van Drie said.

Family Initiative has learned a lot from their own personal experiences and recognizing how much was lacking for their families.

Obstacles included parents not evacuating, but rather staying in place, financially not being able to pay for a hotel, or having the transportation to get there.

“All the things that impact a typical family and then to have additional challenges of a child that struggles when that structure changes — unexpected things,” Van Drie said. “The kids had anxiety and the kids felt it.”

She recalls one instance where one family stayed through the hurricane and their 25-year-old son came to the facility afterwards and found everything he could find out about hurricanes, as his anxiety was high that it was going to happen again.

Van Drie said anything they can do to mitigate that and make it easier for families is what they are striving to do.

Brown said they have an enormous amount of gratitude for local leadership being open and receptive with this conversation. Local leadership really embracing this process speaks volumes, he added.

“We encourage others to engage in other courageous discourse of what else we can do together,” Brown said.

He said it is Family Initiative’s responsibility.

“We know these are the families and kids we love,” Brown said, adding that they want to build enough capacity and structure to be of value to them.