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.
Employing the Spectrum 