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,…
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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…
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…