Anonymous Kids with special needs have, well, special needs. These needs not only present my kid with a lot of challenges; sometimes they mean I need to take unscheduled time off work. (It’s just how it is.) Aside from the time I need for standard IEPs, evaluations, school visits, and the like, my kid has also spent a fair amount of time in the hospital. My kid isn’t the type you leave and say, “be nice to the nurses.” You just don’t do that to a minimally verbal kid with intellectual disability. When my kid is in the hospital a parent has to be there. Which means no work during that time. When my kid was in the hospital, keeping my manager in the loop was not my main priority. I thought leaving a message on his voicemail, such as, “I’m in an ambulance with my son. It’s two AM…
Tag: employment
I bring a bag of things to do—a book, a journal and pen, a music player and headphones—for when I need to chill out. If I get too overwhelmed, I take a walk in the cold air. When I take enough breaks to disengage, I can enjoy spending time together with large groups of relatives!
Come October 1, Americans will be able to start enrolling in Affordable Care Act (ACA, “ObamaCare”) health insurance programs, which will then be implemented January 1st. Since health care policy is so complex, we spoke with The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network‘s Ari Ne’eman about specific advantages, opportunities, and sticking points of the ACA for People with Disabilities. In addition, The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has just released a policy brief on the impact the Affordable Care Act is likely to have on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and what advocates can do to encourage state and federal policymakers to make the most of the law. TPGA: What are ASAN’s primary concerns about how the ACA will affect people with disabilities? Is there a significant component to how the ACA will affect people with intellectual & developmental disabilities? Ari Ne’eman: We view the Affordable Care Act as a significant opportunity for…
Kate A year from now, I turn thirty. A year from now, many people my age are married, with a kid or two on the way. At the very least, they are living on their own, and supporting themselves. Living with your parents is okay in your twenties, but your thirties? That’s just too long for me. I want to be out on my own, doing my own thing, and much as I adore my mother I think I’ve had enough. Yet I have the sinking feeling that I will still be here, still be living at home and cobbling together part time jobs, and damn, but I’m sick of it. I’ve been looking for work for five years now. Five years! I finished my master’s thesis in the fall of 2007 and started interviewing for positions that fall. I’ve since gone on dozens of interviews at human services…
Zoe Gross illusionofcompetence.blogspot.com There’s a new girl in the office and her brain is weird. One of the labels my weird brain has acquired is Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified — PDD-NOS, for short. This is an outdated term for autism, but I still harbor fondness for it because it includes the word “pervasive.” My disability is indeed pervasive, affecting all areas of my daily life — including my work life, and including [my current] internship. Being Autistic changes the way I interact with the professional world, in ways that have been — until now — Not Otherwise Specified. I actually really like working in a formal setting. I like my Senate staff ID badge. I like suits and pleats and zippers. I like taking the metro to work, I like leather shoes, I like taking my belt off and before I go through the metal detector and putting…
Scott Standifer Autism Works National Conference We are in the dregs of winter where I live, and I’ve got the blahs. Everything is cold and grey, the branches are bare, the patches of snow are dirty, and spring seems like it will never get here. Our family’s latest antidote has been listening to a song on one of my son’s old toddler CDs–Bottle of Sunshine by Milkshake. It is a peppy song about a child who finds ways to be unstoppably proactive and creative to entertain herself on days when there is “nothing to do.” (Of course, you can’t really put sunshine in a bottle–that is a metaphor for something fun or cheerful that helps you feel good.) That’s a good metaphor for our upcoming Autism Works National Conference — an antidote for the blahs. There are a lot of people discouraged over the prospects for autism employment right now,…
Scott Standifer Disability Policy and Studies Office School of Health Professions University of Missouri dps.missouri.edu/Autism.html standifers@missouri.edu All images copyright Luna The Moon Girl, used with permission. The photographs of an emerging French photographer depict her fascination with reflections, a feature of her autism. The photographer, who uses the online name “Luna” to protect her privacy, has been quietly posting her haunting, evocative images in the Flickr photo sharing website for the last two years. With oddly vibrant colors, they show entrancing and disorienting scenes of overlapping images which trap one’s eye in layers of meaning. Like most people with autism, Luna has several fixations — topics which intensely fascinate her and dominate her thoughts. For Luna, these include cats, reflections, and vegan cooking. All three show up in her photographs, but her most moving images involve the reflections she finds everywhere. She explains that, for her, “When I’m shooting, I…
Liane Kupferberg Carter www.huffingtonpost.com/liane-kupferberg-carter Editors’ note: While some of the referenced documents discuss parents who seek “cures” for their children with autism, it is our opinion that overall Autism Speaks advises those parents to seek evidence-based supports and therapies. If you ask our son Mickey what he might like to be when he grows up, he will probably say, “A librarian. Or a Pokemon Master!” There aren’t too many jobs for a crackerjack Nintendo player, but Mickey is learning other skills. At 18, he attends the Comprehensive Support Program at our local public high school. But no one program can ever be fully comprehensive. We also run a home-based program to address self-help goals, and send him three mornings a week to a vocational and life skills program at an A.B.A.-based learning center. At home and at both his schools, we work on such tasks as making a grocery list…
Scott Standifer Disability Policy and Studies Office School of Health Professions University of Missouri http://dps.missouri.edu/Autism.html standifers@missouri.edu Introduction from the editors: Many of our readers are from outside the United States, or have children with autism under the age of 16, and so are not yet fully aware of some of the elements of employment and employment planning for adults with disabilities in the US, including autism. The following brief summary is an orientation. In 1973, the United States passed a law that directed federal and state authorities to assist people with disabilities to find employment. In the same time period, the US mandated that children with disabilities must receive educational services, and to be provided with planning for transition from the school years to subsequent employment. In the subsequent years, transition from school to work has evolved in many ways. In the US, the system for helping people with disabilities…
Announcing Autism Works – a national conference on autism and employment. The conference will be Thursday and Friday, March 3 and 4, 2011, at the Sheraton Westport Hotel in St. Louis, MO. The conference will bring together the disability employment services community (vocational rehabilitation) and autism community to learn from each other and improve employment options for adults with autism. Topics will include: understanding the vocational rehabilitation (VR) process, what VR counselors need to know about autism, job development and work-place supports, funding possibilities for employment supports, and insights from working youth with autism. The University of Missouri’s Disability Policy and Studies office, along with Integrated Behavioral Systems, is presenting this national conference. Registration rates and info: $205 2 Day $125 1 Day $180 2 Day Student Rate $105 1 Day Student Rate Agenda [PDF]: dps.missouri.edu/Autism/FBimages/AWAgenda.pdf Website: dps.missouri.edu/Autism.html?cmpGAS Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Autism-Works/136057253090452 Articles from the conference: Is Short-Term Job Coaching Practical…