• locating services to assist adults with disabilities in the home (with daily care, housekeeping, budgeting, shopping, etc.)
• helping adults to find and retain employment,
• assisting with locating groups or organized leisure activities, or
• helping individuals find a place to live.

• Mental retardation/developmental disabilities
• Mental health
• Vocational rehabilitation
• Health and human services
• Aging

Other Parents: Often other parents whose adult children are a few years older than yours can be the best source of practical information about finding and accessing services in your community. If your child has not graduated from high school yet, make an effort to meet other parents of students with disabilities at PTA meetings, back-to-school nights, or school-sponsored functions. Ask your child’s teachers if they can connect you with a few parents whose challenges are similar to your child’s (if they are not allowed to give you the contact information for other parents, ask if they will forward an email or note from you to them.)

If your child has already left high school, there are many ways to find parents of other young adults within your community. Search the internet for list serves and bulletin boards for families of children with ASD. For example, if you go to the home page for Yahoo! Groups (www.yahoogroups.com) and type in “autism” and the name of your state in the search box, you will likely be able to locate at least a couple of support groups in your general area. There may also be support groups for parents of children with ASD or developmental disabilities in your community that have meetings you could attend. Local and online support groups are forming every day in order to focus on post-graduation. Such resources should be tapped to brainstorm ideas and to benefit from the experiences of others who may have encountered similar experiences.

Local Organizations: If there is a county chapter of the ARC, United Disability Services, Easter Seals, or any other organization that serves a broad spectrum of people with disabilities, that may be an excellent place to start your search for local resources. Often these types of organizations will have someone on staff who is knowledgeable about adult services in your area. They may also sponsor workshops or talks about accessing adult services, guardianship, qualifying for state or federal assistance programs, etc.. Also, local medical groups and hospitals are sponsoring more workshops and supports for parents of children with disabilities. Examine newsletters and newspaper inserts for such activities.

National Organizations: National organizations such as the Autism Society of America Speaks or Autism Speaks.org can be a good source of information about nationwide programs that can benefit your adult child. For example, they may be able to provide information about qualifying for federal benefits such as Section 8 housing assistance or Medicaid benefits. If you attend these conferences, you will probably find at least some workshops that are devoted to adult issues.

Find Support for Yourself

Helping your child make the transition to adult life will likely be one of the most difficult experiences of your life. After all, for the last 18 to 21 years, this child has likely been at the center of many of your decisions, activities, and relationships. How are you supposed to turn some or all of these responsibilities over to your young adult child or someone else?

Remember, transition is a journey and will take time. The best way that you can support for yourself as well. As you are pursuing some of the above avenues in searching out supports for your child, he sure to find out what supports they can offer you too.

• If you are networking online or in person in an attempt to locate services for your child, also try to make a personal connection with other parents who are in the same boat.
• Ideally, you can help each other problem solve and can bounce feelings and ideas off one another.
• If you attend local or national conferences, attend some workshops that are devoted to parental coping, marital stress, or the like.
• If your child is going away to college or another type of postsecondary program, check to see if the school offers lectures or other supports to help parents deal with “letting go.”
• If you are truly feeling depressed or anxious about some aspect of the transition process, speak to your doctor about it. There are many medical and psychological interventions that may help.
• If you just want to start with someone to talk to about the grieving process of your child not needing to be as dependent on you, consider contacting your spiritual advisor or leaders within your place of worship.

Practical Realities Post-Graduation

It is important to structure the changes that your child will need to adapt to so they are phased in over time. As suggested in chapter 4, for many students with ASD it is ideal to begin employment and leisure changes during the final years of high school. Then, after graduation, once the individual has adjusted to employment and leisure activities as the primary sources of daily activities, the family can consider making a change in living arrangements.

Adjusting to a Move Out of the Family Home
If your adult child with an ASD is moving into an assisted living arrangement, the trained staff in those facilities can help you determine the appropriate pace for changing the home environment. For example, they might recommend that your child begin by eating one meal a day at the residence to get used to the other residents; or by spending one weekend there to start and increasing time as your child feels comfortable. How quickly you try to transition your adult child to the new home may depend not only on her own ability to understand what is happening, resistance to change, etc., but also on the other residents’ needs for gradual change.

Many of the visual supports discussed in Chapter 5, such as Social Stories, can be useful in helping your child adjust to this change. For example, she might benefit from a Social Story that clarifies that she will still be allowed to visit you at home and how frequently she can do so after she moves to her new residence.

Adjusting to College Life
If your adult child is moving into a college dorm or apartment, it will be important to structure the move so that she has control and feels safe. It may be important for your child to spend extra time on campus before classes start getting used to the new living arrangement. If there is a disability Services office they may able to help you coordinate this. Some college students with ASD might benefit from watching videos about the college and campus life there.

Your family and your college student with an ASD will need to determine parameters for contacting each other in order to promote independence for your child while still allowing her to feel safe. More frequent contact and visits may be appropriate in the beginning with goals for decreasing the contact over time. For example, you may determine that your child will call you once in the morning when she gets up and once in the evening each day. You can then decrease the amount of time for each call and then the frequency of the calls. Given that most college students text or email parents frequently from school, you may not want to limit this unless this type of contact is interfering with school work and social times.

Remaining In the Family Home after High School
If your adult child with ASD is remaining in the family home, you will need to decide how to continue to promote your child’s independence. How will things at home be different now that your child has completed high school and is officially an adult? Issues to consider include:

• Do you need to establish new boundaries? For example, if your adult child is capable of going out on her own does she need curfew? Or, if she no longer needs to get up early for school, do you need to enforce a quiet time at night so others can sleep? See Chapter 5 for examples of visual supports that can help your child learn new household rules.
• Do you need to charge your adult child rent? Depending on what kind of government assistance she is receiving, you may need to charge her rent, board, or both. Do you need to help her set money aside to pay it?
• Do you want to change the chores and other household responsibilities assigned to your child? In general, it is a good idea to gradually give your adult child increasing responsibilities, working systematically to teach her as many daily living tasks as possible and to reduse her reliance on family members.
• As more attention is being paid to opportunities for adults with ASD, assist your young adult in continuing to seek opportunities for leisure activities, social skills instruction, or behavior therapy.

• transportation to and from work or the recreational activity,
• access to meals and snacks during the day (will your child pack her lunch? who will make it for her?),
• initial strategies to acclimate your child with autism to the setting prior to starting,
• orienting your child to the location and use of restrooms and break rooms, and
• familiarizing your child with the daily schedule itself.

It is important remember that neurotypical young adults often leave high school believing that they want to work in a specific field or study a certain topic. Then, they change their minds two or three times before they settle in on a focus area. The same may be true for the person with an ASD. Such unsettled times present a great deal of stress for all families. Stress is likely to be at a higher level, however, for families of young adults with autism who are undecided about their future.

If your adult child with autism is unsure about future plans, how you respond to her is critical. You will need to seek out supports in your community for help with changing your child’s chosen path. For example, you may be able to get assistance from a “supports coordinator” at your local MH/MR or Developmental Disabilities program. You should also seek support for yourself as discussed on page 94.

Day-to-Day Activities: Unstructured Time
Once students leave the structure of a school setting with built-in opportunities for leisure activities, it can be difficult to find good activities to help fill up unstructured time. As recommended in Chapter 4, you and the IEP team can work as partners to try out different types of leisure activities that your child can do both inside and outside of the home. In the final two years of school, your child can focus more on activities that are available in the community and less on those offered in school.

Balancing community involvement and leisure time activities with other schedules is a challenge for everyone whether they have a disability or not. For the person with autism, this challenge has some variables that may tip the balance one way or another. For young adults who are attending school or are employed but wish to participate in social activities with peers, it may be difficult to ensure that social activities do not interfere with school or work obligations.

One reason is that some people with ASDs have a skewed perception of expectations. They may believe that in order to maintain a relationship with people, they must participate in every activity the group does. Conversely, they may believe that work or school friends need to remain in those settings ands that spending time with them in other settings is inappropriate. Your adult child with ASD may need you or another adult to help her understand such scenarios and may need to continue with social skills instructional strategies that were effective during the school years. Again, using visual supports such as Social Stories, Comic Strip Conversations, or video modeling, as discussed in Chapter 5, may help your adult child understand social expectations.

People with autism who require more support to participate in community and leisure activities may be dependent on others and their schedules for participation. It is important to seek out support from the community to allow young adults with ASD to spend time outside of their living quarters. For example, if your adult child is active in church activities, another church member might be willing to transport her. The same could be true for any type of organized event such as a bowling league, video club, or dancing group.