Sunday, 20 February 2011

• Young Adults with Autism.

   

  

  Young adults with autism are essentially “pushed off a cliff” after high school once they graduate high school and are no longer entitled to services, says Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. In a first-of-its-kind study, Shattuck looked at rates of service use among young adults with an ASD during their first few years after leaving high school. He found that 39.1 percent of these youths received no speech therapy, mental health, medical diagnostics or case management services.
  

  Autistic young adults missing out on much-needed services | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis.

  The above link will take you to the full article.  I saw a news report on tv last week about this.  It was scary, but expected.  Our children don’t stop being autistic once they turn 18.  They stop being an autistic child and become autistic adults.  I spend my time focusing on getting my son through his childhood.  What happens when he is an adult?  My husband says we have plenty of time before that happens.  My son turns 12 next month.  If we don’t start planning for it now, when should we?

   

  When my son becomes an adult, I won’t stop being his advocate.  He will need me to fight for him just as hard then, as he does now.  We will be in a whole new arena.  I will be learning to navigate my way through adult services, just the way I did for child services.  Only, this time, I will have the experience of advocating for my autistic child to help me advocate for him as an adult.

  With the rate of autistic children being so high, it makes me wonder how they are going to survive as adults.  If the economy doesn’t change soon, will there be enough money to make available services for all of our children when they turn 18?  How long will waiting lists be?  They are long for our children now, will they be even longer as adults?

  What can be done now to help ensure a better future for our children?  I don’t like the idea of playing the wait and see game.  I would like to figure out how we can start making the future better for our children now.

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