Dear Sensational SPDF Friend:

We started distributing this newsletter, Sensations, in 2005. It has really evolved over the years. We have continued to add to it and we are committed to providing you with the latest news on SPD research, education, and advocacy as well as strategies (tips and tools) for parents and professionals. After our June issue, we decided to survey you to improve our communications and ensure that the content of Sensations is meeting your needs. We have only eight people on the staff at SPD Foundation, so we rely on our supporters to help us spread awareness. We want to ensure that this newsletter is something you feel is significant enough to share with others. We received over 1,000 responses to our questionnaire and learned so much. Thanks to all of you who responded!

Half of the respondents said they had never seen the newsletter. The funny thing is that we used the same mail list for the survey as we do for the newsletter! Thus we learned that we were not doing a good job of telling you in the subject line that this is the newsletter and perhaps you were deleting it. It is also possible that the newsletter is going into your junk mail. So from this issue forward, we will put Sensations e-Newsletter in the subject line. If you still do not get it, mark us as a "safe sender" in your e-mail account. This is usually located in "tools or actions." If you do find it in junk mail, you can click "add sender to safe sender list>"

From your sensational feedback we have made some changes to our newsletter to better serve your needs. We are re-labeling our current parent tips (called STARLights) to STARLights: Parent Tips and adding a new section called STARLights: OT Resources for occupational therapists.

As requested, we've also included a link to our resources page to find books and equipment, a link to our treatment directory to find service providers all over the world, a link to our library page to find articles, and directions on how to navigate these pages. Look for these items in a new section called Helpful Resources.

We also updated our Help Us Help page with information about our Facebook Cause page and Twitter account, as well as information on volunteer work and fundraising activities.

As a final touch, we included more information in the navigation bar to the left. The details of the contents of the newsletter are now available at a glance.

By the way, we are very excited about our first symposium in the beautiful Northwest and hope to see you in Seattle from November 12-14!

Thanks for your support and friendship,

Lucy Jane Miller, PhD, OTR Founder and Executive Director