Imagine a Life
A Roadmap for Parents: Developing an Individualized Plan for the ASD Journey
Integrated Autism Consulting (IAC) has had a particular interest in working with young adults to assist them in charting their path to successful and meaningful lives. During the transition from secondary school, when young adults with ASD face the daunting challenge in taking the next step forward to adulthood, specific supports and resources are essential. As a result of the inherent characteristics of ASD, these young adults find themselves anxious, frustrated and confused. Often they are unsuccessful in their pursuits after secondary school: often dropping out of university or college, unable to find or maintain employment or graduating to their family’s basement and retreating into their own or online world. The recognition of these outcomes and the looming cohort of secondary school graduates with ASD, led to the development of the Transition To Life course (TTL). TTL was designed to provide participants with a comprehensive 12 week course in the many critical elements that need to be incorporated into the transition journey. Through the course and individualized coaching sessions participants learn about themselves and how to begin to navigate the transition to the adult world.
Since 2012 IAC has been directly involved in coaching, consultation for families and their young adults as well as conducting TTL courses throughout the province. Although parent participation is considered a key component of IAC’s founder Pat O’Connor’s model, this experience provided considerable insight into the need for more direct parent training. The Imagine A Life course was developed as a guide for parents who usually are as dazed, confused and frustrated about what to do next. The school programs, the professional and monetary supports were, for the most part, no longer there to assist in one of the most critical junctures of their transition into the adult world. We had TTL for the young adults but what about the parents who are critical and the most committed to their success. There was a great need for parents to have a framework to understand how their young adult was to navigate the transition to expectations and performance in the adult world. The use of journey we believe is an apt metaphor and description for conceptualizing the transition process. They generally feel ill equipped to undertake next steps beyond their familiar and safe environment, and parents vitally concerned about their future, have minimal resources to support them. The traditional approach of going to post-secondary school, finding employment, making friends, exploring sexuality, living independently, often does not occur successfully for ASD individuals, without knowledgeable assistance and guidance. With the years of experience working with parents as an educator, coach, and consultant and extensive experience with the ASD population, Pat has designed and developed an intensive workshop that addresses these critical needs… Imagine A Life.
An Exciting ASD Transition Journey: Hedley article PDFv2.pdf
This article first appeared in Autism Matters in the Fall 2017 Issue.
Transitioning to Adulthood: Employment Strategies and Life Skills for Teens and Young Adults with ASD
Transition to Life: Strategies to Facilitate Success
Pat O’Connor speaking at the SAAAC Conference Fall 2019: Click here to view
Family support for individuals with ASD is a critical success factor in their transition to adulthood. Parents are their child’s first and lifelong teachers. Yet…. Their role is often minimalized and marginalized. At Integrated Autism we embrace and promote working as a team to navigate the many paths and pitfalls of that young people with ASD face in their transition to adulthood. The key issues that parents have to deal with at this juncture are to:
- Understand and support the challenges of transitioning youth with ASD struggling to cope with the new reality
- Deal with decreased services for adults
- Absorb challenges in behaviour by seeking solutions to assist in them coping
- Provide parents with strategies and insight for the struggles and challenges in envisioning supports for the near and distant future
- Get a handle on the lack of understanding about the adult service system
To overcome these issues it is important for parents to understand certain gaps and realities of young adults with ASD:
- They are asked to follow a generic pathway ill-configured for them
- They need a tailored roadmap that is relevant in content to them as individuals and at an appropriate pace
- They are not prepared to transition from a passive student role into an active worker role
- They often possess skills and talents but cannot move from “marginal to marketable”.
- They need preparation with specific skills and behaviour modifications that are required for successful participation in the neurotypical world
Imagine A Life is a multi-day workshop for parents to:
- Gain understanding of the ASD context in the youth to adult transition
- Understand the critical success factors when developing a transition plan
- Participate and share with other parents for understanding and support
- Consider the barriers to developing a meaningful daily schedule such as executive functioning, computer addiction and sleep
- Explore self-regulation and anxiety reduction strategies
- Learn how to assess and develop goals for their child in life skills, work readiness, community involvement, social understanding, health and wellness, and lifelong learning
- Provide opportunity for individualized consultations
Please Contact Patrica for information on the multi-day workshops and the 3-hour overviews.
Imagine a Life: Parent Evaluations Responses:
Survey information collected by Autism Ontario
“100% would recommend Imagine a Life to others.”
“Would love to, and do, however there are still so many parents out there that do not know how to identify ASD or accept it. Parents need help to start!”
“Excellent! Loved it! Would definitely attend another! Please extend it to three day workshop – lots of info.”
“All parents of ASD children need this information. Thank you so much!”
“Absolutely! My only input would be to make the print out of slides bigger – hard to read and little room to take notes.”
“For sure because it is needed here”
“Awesome info, this gives some concrete tools to share and confirmation of the thinking and what we want to do to go forward”
“The resource book is great. Thank you for all the strategies and activity sheets that are included in the second half of it.”
“It would be beneficial to have an overview of agencies, services and acronyms that are involved with transitions from youth to adult. Some of the information was hard to grasp with all the acronyms (ODSP, SIS, ILS, DSO…etc). Otherwise, the info provided was extremely helpful.”
“This day was extremely full. Doing this over 2 or 3 days would be better. I am so happy to take this course when my child is only 13. I feel far more comfortable with his future.”
“But needs to be more than one day.”