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Autistic strengths should be utilised to best effect

spadger

Hi,

I am the father of three kids with varying degrees of autism. My eldest is 22, has Aspergers and on a positive note has recently started his first job but it is early days as yet.

The next is 18 (also has Aspergers) and we are finding it difficult to know how to help him towards a suitable, enjoyable long term career path. The youngest is 11 (High functioning autism) and although he is doing well within the specialist education environment, I am concerned about his future prospects.

Their seems to be little real government policy regarding supporting and assisting the huge volume of unemployed ASD people into sustainable employment despite most of them wanting to be in employment. 

In addition, given the strengths ASD individuals can offer to employers given the appropriate support and training, it seems to me that society is missing out on a massive valuable untapped resource.

I have recently started to investigate in more detail what opportunities are available and this led me to discover Specialisterne (Specialists), a Danish organisation that have developed a model for assisting ASD people into sustainable, professional, enjoyable work (usually testing software and data entry). http://specialistpeople.com/

In recent years they have developed a franchise style partnership model and as such have expanded into a number of countries the nearest being Scotland. http://www.specialisternescotland.org/

Does anyone know of any similar projects running or due to start in England, particularly the North West?

Parents

  • longman said:
    someone who knows his way round the starship enterprise or is a master at certain computer wargames is not destined to be much good at real world tasks.

    This is the only part of your post that I entirely disagree with, longman. I personally think no matter what the S.I. there's a way to make money from it. Someone with an in depth knowledge of the Starship Enterprise could go work for whomever it is that make Star Trek, or set up an unoffical 'everything there is to know about the Starship Enterprise' website, for example.

    It may require thinking outside the box of what is a 'normal' job. But I believe it could be done in all cases.

    One thing I've thought about, but which would require the kind of oranisational skills that aren't common amongst us on the spectrum, would be to pool different talents and abilities from across the community - so the 'knows everything about the Starship Enterprise' person could be paired with the 'knows everything about setting up a website' and the 'has an amazing ability to draw anything you ask him to' people, to produce the best illustrated, most in depth, and fully functional, website all about the inner workings of said starship.

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  • longman said:
    someone who knows his way round the starship enterprise or is a master at certain computer wargames is not destined to be much good at real world tasks.

    This is the only part of your post that I entirely disagree with, longman. I personally think no matter what the S.I. there's a way to make money from it. Someone with an in depth knowledge of the Starship Enterprise could go work for whomever it is that make Star Trek, or set up an unoffical 'everything there is to know about the Starship Enterprise' website, for example.

    It may require thinking outside the box of what is a 'normal' job. But I believe it could be done in all cases.

    One thing I've thought about, but which would require the kind of oranisational skills that aren't common amongst us on the spectrum, would be to pool different talents and abilities from across the community - so the 'knows everything about the Starship Enterprise' person could be paired with the 'knows everything about setting up a website' and the 'has an amazing ability to draw anything you ask him to' people, to produce the best illustrated, most in depth, and fully functional, website all about the inner workings of said starship.

Children
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