Hancock County teen builds sensory bags to help first responders understand autism
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By Lane Tongate
Noah Abbott is like a lot of 15-year-olds around here. He loves shooter games like Fortnite and will rarely turn down a donut. But he also spends more of his free time than most giving back to his community.
Noah is autistic and he uses his personal experience to help others understand it better. He has taken up public speaking, organized events, and raised money all in the name of autism awareness and acceptance. His latest venture is focused on helping first responders in Hancock County understand and better support people with autism.
Noah has put together sensory support bags, meant to give police, firefighters and EMS workers a few simple tools when they assist someone who is neurodivergent. “A lot of your emergency providers in general didn’t have really enough knowledge, didn’t know how to provide for their neurodivergent people,” Noah said. He pointed to news stories over the years where autistic people were hurt or even shot because officers were caught off guard and didn’t know how to respond. He said training has gotten better, but the tools haven’t always caught up.
“A lot of officers get the training, but they don’t have the materials that can provide a lot of support for them when it comes to providing for neurodivergent people,” he said.
His mother, Tiffany, said the idea grew out of a program run by a fireman in Indiana whose son has autism. That fireman travels around doing trainings and selling similar bags, but it comes at a cost. “It’s super expensive to get them to come to communities,” Tiffany said.
So Noah told his mom they should just do it themselves and build something local families and departments could actually afford. Each bag includes fidget toys, noise-canceling headphones, communication sheets so a nonverbal person can point to what hurts or how they feel, and weighted plushies. “I would say it’s like the same material that’s in a weighted blanket, but it’s put into a plushie, like a stuffed animal,” Noah said.
A full bag runs somewhere around $50 to $60, and Tiffany said she is constantly hunting for the best deals to stretch every dollar as far as it will go.
When asked what is one thing he would want every first responder to know, Noah didn’t hesitate. “If I could tell one thing, I would want to tell that the truth is, you might need a lot of patience, and I don’t mean that in a mean way,” he said. He explained that autism looks different in nearly everyone who has it. Some autistic people you couldn’t even tell are autistic, he said, while others are nonverbal, and there’s a wide range between support needed. That is why he keeps coming back to the same word. “Patience is always going to help you one way or another,” he said.
When asked how he hopes people remember this project, Noah didn’t talk about himself so much as he talked about numbers. “I want people to remember that they could contribute to this in their own ways too,” he said. “Like, to be honest, I’m happy to do this for maybe my entire life, but at the end of the day, I’m only one person in like a world with 8 billion people. But if I even could convince another one to help me, that’s two in a world of 8 billion people.”
It is a big way of thinking for someone who is just entering high school, but it seems to be exactly what is driving him. Tiffany said doctors once painted a very different picture of Noah’s future.
“We were told he would never speak, that we shouldn’t expect much, and he would probably sit around and watch spinning objects his whole life,” she said. She said the family grieved that news at the time but decided that doctors didn’t get the final say. Noah did.
“I truly believe he is changing the world,” Tiffany said.
She said watching local departments use the bags brings her to tears, and that Noah’s heart is her favorite part of all of it. She sees herself and her family as a vehicle for the project, but she is quick to point out whose idea and whose heart it really is.
The community has already stepped up. Commonwealth Roll Products sponsored a dozen full bags through an Amazon gift card, and individual donations have come in at every amount, five dollars, ten dollars, twenty, or enough to cover a whole bag. Tiffany asks departments for one thing in return, if someone holds onto an item from the bag and doesn’t want to let go, let them keep it, and the family will replace it.
He may be a teenager who loves Fortnite and donuts, but Noah Abbott is also helping his community rethink how it shows up for people like him. He doesn’t expect to do it by himself. He simply wants to be one voice among billions, and he’s hoping others will find the courage to join him.
Anyone who wants to help can donate through Venmo @Tiffany-Abbott-10 or contact Tiffany at [email protected].
