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New foster parent launches Peer Connect to help people with special needs find friends

Hartford Courant - 1/22/2021

Seeking to relieve the loneliness of her autistic foster son, an East Hartford woman has launched a social media hub for kids and adults with special needs.

Created about two weeks ago, the Peer Connect Facebook page is meant as an event center, friend connecter and social mixing destination for people with intellectual disabilities and other challenges, which group founder Carrie Howe calls “superpowers,” a better name, she says, for people “who think differently.”

Howe, who works as a retirement plan record keeper, also has ten years of experience working with children and adults with special needs. She said Thursday that she had the idea for the Peer Connect group after becoming a first-time foster parent to a 17-year-old in October. The teen was new to the area and even more isolated due to the pandemic.

“He was really upset and lonely,” Howe said. “So I did what I always do — I took it to Facebook because Facebook can be used for great things.”

The meal coordinator at a Hartford soup kitchen also has a deep background in volunteerism. Howe started the Night Angels group after a cold night in 2011 when she and friends stopped to help a homeless man wearing only a T-shirt.

They gave him a coat and some food and he hailed them in Spanish as “angels of the night.” The group is described on its Facebook page —facebook.com/NightAngelsRus — as “just people helping people with basic needs, love and warmth.”

Peer Connect also needs volunteers, Howe said. The group’s first event is a karaoke party set for Friday at 7 p.m., but Howe said she’s also looking for people who can host workshops on topics such as sports, gaming, arts and crafts, simple meals, storytelling and music.

Jennifer Havlin, a New Britain native now living in Kentucky, says her two sons will attend the virtual karaoke party and one plans to sing, “I See the Light,” from the movie, “Tangled.” Havlin said she and her sons, Toni and Daniel, are enthusiastic Peer Connect participants.

Ages 19 and almost 22, both have intellectual disabilities. Isolation from friends during the pandemic and lack of activities such as going to the movies, Havlin said, “has caused them to regress, made them more lethargic.”

“They can’t understand what’s going on,” she said. “They feel like they’re being punished.”

Peer Connect, Havlin said, promises to show her sons that they can still gather with other people and make friends.

“It’s important to them in their mental growth,” she said. “It actually is a mental necessity for them to have these connections.”

Other parents in similar circumstances have posted messages on the Peer Connect page. A mother wrote, “I have twin boys who are turning 9 soon. They are very sweet and kind and would love to make a new friend. We are also completely at home now and it’s really hurting.”

Howe said some parents have connected on the site to bring their kids together.

To make the new group as safe and secure as possible, Howe said she speaks directly to potential participants, who can then join a subgroup called Peer Connections. Currently, 20 families are signed up for workshops. More information is available at facebook.com/conn3ctions.

Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com

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