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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

  • I understand what you are saying Scorpion0x17, but the chances are, even with such skill combinations it will be hard to find remunerative employment. Yes if there is a financial basis for designing marketable software, but you are still in a limited market.

    Even pooling talents, assuming individuals could work in a team effectively, has limited employment prospects.

    I'm wary of citing my own experience as I'm at the able end and have had a career, albeit a struggle at times. I was diagnosed until mid-fifties, and I had to find a way of earning a living. My special interests are absorbing but not money-making (money loosing more like).

    I had to adapt and it was a long drawn out process where I compromised my comfort zone to do other things. I have found though that, while there are things I would rather do, I have an aptitude for research and will research about anything. However that may just be me, and I often wonder if others on the spectrum could broaden their special interests to include other things.

    I think that might be something that needed support to help people do so, and my notion is this should be tried at school, along with developing research skills. An aptitude for information gathering applied to tasks people will pay for as a service is a way into a career.  You have to be able to network, but in that sort of role you are less likely to have to socially integrate/fit-in.

    By broaden I mean look at the trade-off between comfort zone and what other people want. What sort of things would you be interested in that were a bit different from what you'd rather do? What sort of things would you find uncomfortable to do? By becoming more flexible gradually being able to take on more tasks.

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  • I understand what you are saying Scorpion0x17, but the chances are, even with such skill combinations it will be hard to find remunerative employment. Yes if there is a financial basis for designing marketable software, but you are still in a limited market.

    Even pooling talents, assuming individuals could work in a team effectively, has limited employment prospects.

    I'm wary of citing my own experience as I'm at the able end and have had a career, albeit a struggle at times. I was diagnosed until mid-fifties, and I had to find a way of earning a living. My special interests are absorbing but not money-making (money loosing more like).

    I had to adapt and it was a long drawn out process where I compromised my comfort zone to do other things. I have found though that, while there are things I would rather do, I have an aptitude for research and will research about anything. However that may just be me, and I often wonder if others on the spectrum could broaden their special interests to include other things.

    I think that might be something that needed support to help people do so, and my notion is this should be tried at school, along with developing research skills. An aptitude for information gathering applied to tasks people will pay for as a service is a way into a career.  You have to be able to network, but in that sort of role you are less likely to have to socially integrate/fit-in.

    By broaden I mean look at the trade-off between comfort zone and what other people want. What sort of things would you be interested in that were a bit different from what you'd rather do? What sort of things would you find uncomfortable to do? By becoming more flexible gradually being able to take on more tasks.

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