Two Case Studies Based on Project SEARCH

Hi All! I’m sorry it has been such a long time since I last posted. Lots of life-stuff and academic-stuff happened in between, but I should be posting more regularly now, especially since I’m in a middle of the literature review for my dissertation. I know I said I was going to post about Project ABLE (Edit: sorry, did I say Project ABLE? I meant PROSPECTS. Project ABLE is a third program, based in Ireland.), but I kind of got distracted, as I do, and jumped to Project SEARCH. For those of you waiting for info on Project ABLE, don’t worry, I will definitely get back to Project ABLE soon!

As for Project SEARCH, I read a paper today that was particularly interesting. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Project SEARCH, it is a program for young adults with “significant intellectual and developmental disabilities” that helps transition them to the workplace. It initially starts in high school, I believe in the student’s senior year, with employment skills training. This then leads to a rotating internship program, which I believe began in a hospital setting, and allows the individuals to try out different types of position to determine best fit.

There have been multiple papers written about Project Search in the last 3 years or so and I will post them as I read them, but this one caught my attention because it takes the experiences of two specific young adults with ASD (one co-morbid with down syndrome) and described the issues they encountered, what behavior interventions the specialists created to support the individuals, and how these interventions worked out. Both of the employees were employed for at least two years!

Opps! I have to go now. I will come back, hopefully later tonight, to update this post with more information about the interventions they used.

Reference:

Ham, W., McDonough, J., Molinelli, A., Schall, C., and Wehman, P. (2014). Employment supports for young adults with autism spectrum disorder: Two case studies. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 40, pp. 117-124.

Fantastic Employment Handbook

I am still working on the Prospects entry, but I wanted to share this really great handbook I found that is published by The National Autistic Society (NAS) in the UK (the organization that largely funds the Prospects program). The paperback version is 60 pounds (sorry, I haven’t figured out how to do the pound symbol in this program), but I found that the digital version is 20 pounds (which I linked to below). I purchased and downloaded the digital version and am VERY impressed. It is an excellent resource for individuals on the spectrum going into the job market.

I pulled out Roger Meyer’s Asperger Syndrome Employment Workbook and Gail Hawkin’s How to Find Work that Works for People with Asperger Syndrome, quickly reviewed them, and found that while all three books have their strengths, if you only have time/resources for one, I would suggest the NAS book, especially since it is not solely focused on Aspergers. It is aesthetically pleasing with illustrations and boxes that break down the text and it has examples of what employers are looking for and has fill-in sections to help guide you along the job-seeking process. It does use slightly different workplace vocabulary than what Americans may generally use (like “roles” vs “positions”), but it shouldn’t be a problem. Another plus is that the digital version is downloaded as a pdf, so it is easy to print. That said, it is almost 240 pages, so you may want to only print certain pages. The book includes information about choosing, applying, and interviewing for positions, communication and social skills, managing anxiety, preparing for the workplace, and additional tools.

Link to Purchasing the Handbook

An Interesting Resource

…aannnndddd I’m back! Sorry about the long hiatus…I had a major exam at the end of last semester and caught some weird stomach bug around the same time, which took quite a bit of time to recover from (the bug, not the test). Anyway, I am currently working on getting through the research about the very fascinating (to me) UK Prospects program. I will post about that soon. In the meantime, I came across this resource that was an interesting read. I will also post this in the resource section of the website. It breaks down some of the various aspects of the job-searching/job-keeping process (from both the employee and employer perspectives) and has some helpful tips. I believe it is free, so that’s definitely a plus!

Kurtz, A., and Jordan, M. (2008). Supporting individuals with autism spectrum disorders: Quality employment practices. The Institute Brief, 25, ICI Professional Development Series.

Restricted Repetitive Behaviors (RRBs) May Decrease Over Time

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Today’s post is going to be short because I am (Finally!) finishing up the documentation I need to submit to IRB for my dissertation. (If you don’t know what that means, you don’t need to know…it’s boring academic stuff. =) Anyway, I just read a paper on RRBs while doing my research and decided to quickly post about it before I forgot about it.Continue reading “Restricted Repetitive Behaviors (RRBs) May Decrease Over Time”

Joined Facebook, I think.

Whenever I see a cool work-related article about individuals on the spectrum, etc., I want to share it, but I don’t because most of my friends are probably not interested in such articles. So, I decided to create a Facebook page linked to this website so that I can share those articles to people who are actually interested. So, if you are interested, please like the Facebook page.

Creating a page, however, seems to have more elements than I anticipated, so I’m still looking at all the options. For all I know, I’m on Twitter or something. Please let me know if I did something wrong and bear with me as I figure it out. =)

How Walgreens Successfully Employs Individuals with Disabilities

In the couple of weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I read Randy Lewis’s book, No Greatness Without Goodness: How a Father’s Love Changed a Company and Sparked a Movement. You know how I keep saying that hiring individuals with ASD is generally a small-business game? Apparently, I was completely wrong. (And I am woman enough to admit it.)Continue reading “How Walgreens Successfully Employs Individuals with Disabilities”

To Disclose or Not To Disclose? (Dalgin and Bellini)

Isn’t that the loaded question? I mentioned this article a few entries ago, so I thought I’d circle around and actually talk about it. This is a tough decision for those on the spectrum (for people with all types of disabilities, I would imagine). If you disclose, will the interviewer be more forgiving of your awkwardness? Or will they be so afraid of the unknown that they will be less likely to hire you? Should you disclose in your cover letter or during the interview? Or after you are hired? Or never? This study did not discuss autism, but the results are relevant. Before I disappoint you, however, I will note that this study, like all studies I have ever read and will ever read, does not give us definitive answers.Continue reading “To Disclose or Not To Disclose? (Dalgin and Bellini)”

2 Management Issues that People with Asperger’s Face

I came across this while reading Rudy Simone’s book, Asperger’s on the Job. The book has been sitting on my shelf for year or two and I just found it while looking for another book. I just started it (I will comment on it later), but I just finished the forward written by Dr. Temple Grandin, which had many interesting insights, but included two that jumped out at me. She mentioned that in her experience with individuals on the spectrum, there were two issues related to management that she noticed kept coming up.

Issue #1: PromotionContinue reading “2 Management Issues that People with Asperger’s Face”

Do people in IT and tech jobs tend to have kids with ASD?

As I mentioned in the About section, my research interests are mostly focused on individuals with ASD in the technology sector. While I try to make the articles I post about on this site more well-rounded in scope, please indulge me an occasional tech-based article. After I geek out a little, I will try to go back to our regularly-scheduled general-interest articles. Oh, who am I kidding, as a grad student with 2 kids, I don’t have regularly-scheduled anything.

But I digress…

Title:

Are Autism Spectrum Conditions More Prevalent in an Information-Technology Region? A School-Based Study of Three Regions in the Netherlands

Discussion:

Simon Baron-Cohen, one of the co-authors of this paper, predicted in a previous paper that people who work in the tech industry are often talented systemizers, people who are driven to analyze how systems work, “and to predict, control, and build systems” (p. 735), and that they are more likely to have children with ASD. Therefore, if there is a relatively large amount of children with ASD in the same areas where there are a relatively large amount of people in high tech jobs (and statistically adjusting for other possible reasons for this connection), then this would be evidence that people in high tech jobs are more likely to have children with ASD. Continue reading “Do people in IT and tech jobs tend to have kids with ASD?”

Found a New Picture

After testing out a few options, I picked this photo, which is, admittedly, not as cool as the default mountain picture, but made more sense for this site. I didn’t spend THAT much time on it, so don’t gather too much meaning from it. It has puzzle pieces in it (duh) and I liked that the puzzle was, first of all, not complete (what company is, right?) and that the pieces were all pretty much the same (we are all puzzle pieces, are we not?).