PBS Special Message

[Guest guest]

All,

Here's a link to Autism: Coming of Age, the PBS program about families' searches

for appropriate community supports for their adult children with autism:

http://www.wgby.org/autism/index.html. You can watch it online for free.

To Sherri and all, my suggestion would be to not only share with your

legislators (if they would actually watch it) but also, perhaps as importantly,

figure out strategies to get this in front of other PARENTS who do not subscribe

to places like IPADD and in front of community groups/leaders who are potential

partners to families in this situation. We all need to do our parts in widening

the net, and in capturing the imaginations of the next generation of

parents/young adults coming up behind us, as well as our local communities at

large.

Why?

In my town, we have well-educated parents when it comes to advocating with the

schools. However, my impression is that MOST in our community are not seriously

planning for 'vocation' of any kind, volunteer paid or somewhere in between.

We've recently had a situation locally where families/students were offered the

opportunity to work 10-15 hours a week in the (relatively) safe and supportive

environment of the public schools, in PAID jobs that some of us advocated for

creating, that are considered 'long-term' (I.e. will go beyond transition for as

long as the person is doing the job well)...

AND FIVE FAMILIES TURNED THE JOBS DOWN.

There were many different reasons, all of them making complete sense to the

families involved.

What do we learn from this experience? Not to assume everyone is behind the

idea of working in the community, or of having their individual 'work' at all.

Out of misplaced kindness, concern, or the parent being overwhelmed (often

rightly so) at the concept of supporting, transporting, and troubleshooting paid

or volunteer community opportunities. We learned that sometimes, the idea of

the individual 'staying home' after transition seems like a safer choice to many

parents.

Think this couldn't happen in your neighborhood or in your school district?

Think again. I'll be it's more common that we know.

So next time we think about the need to educate our elected officials, let's

also try spend some time educating one another and educating our community at

large. We all need one another!

Laurie