One in three adults with autism lack professional experience, worrying experts

A group home for adults with autism in central New Jersey.

/ CBS News

(CBS/AP) Adults with autism often fare worse when it comes to work and educational experience than people with other disabilities, including those who are mentally disabled, a new study suggests.

The study found one in three young adults with autism has no paid job experience, college or technical schooling nearly seven years after high school graduation, a study finds. That's a poorer showing than those with other disabilities including those who are mentally disabled, the researchers said.

Autism awareness: College programs for students on the spectrum
Video: Group homes for autistic adults
Complete coverage: Latest developments in autism

With roughly half a million autistic kids reaching adulthood in the next decade, experts say it's an issue policymakers urgently need to address.

Ian Wells of Allentown, N.J., is 21, autistic and won't graduate from high school until next year. He is unlikely to attend college because of his autism. He wants a job but has only found unpaid internships and is currently working part-time and unpaid as a worker at a fastener factory.

He's a hard worker, with good mechanical skills, but has trouble reading and speaking, said his mother, Barbara Wells. She said his difficulties understanding social cues and body language can make other people uncomfortable.

"I'm very afraid" about his prospects for ever finding long-term employment, she said. "It keeps me up at night."

For the study, published online Monday in Pediatrics, researchers looked at data on 2,000 young adults with one of four types of disabilities, including 500 with autism, that was collected from the U.S. Department of Education from 2007-08. They found that within two years of leaving high school, more than half of those with autism had no job experience, college or technical education.

Things improved as they got older. Yet nearly seven years after high school, 35 percent of autistic young adults still had no paid employment or education beyond high school. Those figures compare with 26 percent of mentally disabled young adults, 7 percent of young adults with speech and language problems, and 3 percent of those with learning disabilities.

Those with autism may fare worse because many also have each of the other disabilities studied.

It's the largest study to date on the topic and the results "are quite a cause for concern," said lead author Paul Shattuck, an assistant professor at Washington University's Brown School of Social Work in St. Louis.

"There is this wave of young children who have been diagnosed with autism who are aging toward adulthood. We're kind of setting ourselves up for a scary situation if we don't think about that and how we're going to help these folks and their families," Shattuck said.

CBS News reported earlier this year that government data suggest that 1 in 88 U.S. kids have autism, and there's evidence that the rate is rising.

Within the next 10 years, more than 500,000 kids with autism will reach adulthood, said Peter Bell, vice president for programs and services at Autism Speaks, an advocacy group that helped pay for the study.

"It's a huge, huge issue," Bell said. "Unfortunately there are many families that really struggle to understand what that transition ultimately entails. ...They face the reality of having a child who may potentially not be able to have enough services to keep them busy during the day."

"It's only going to get worse ..." Bell said. His own 19-year-old son has autism and is being home-schooled and Bell has hired therapists to prepare him for jobs and other life skills.

Carol Schall, a special education policy specialist, said the results confirm smaller studies showing difficulties facing kids with autism as they transition into adulthood, and also highlight a need for better job training services offered in public schools for special education students.

She is involved in research at Virginia Commonwealth University investigating whether on-the-job training and teaching social cues to high school students with autism makes them more employable.

Kids are taught a range of practical skills and appropriate behavior. "It takes a much higher degree of intensity for them to learn skills" than for other kids, she said. According to Schall, preliminary results show this training has helped kids with autism find and keep jobs.

Autism Speaks has more information on resources for adults with autism.

[workingwithautism]

Autism in adults is something to learn about.
Working with Autism, located in Los Angeles, has helped hundreds of children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder to achieve their maximum potential for independence. www.workingwithautism.com

[SeekEast]

This a multi layer issue that is important to all of us. As a Speech Language Pathologist and a Psychotherapist we have lived this many times over with our clients across the years.

http://seekeast.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/job-training-for-adults-on-the-autism-spectrum/

[dreamymiss100]

I have been completely disgusted since the numbers for autism began exploding. Obviously something is causing this. Considering the amount of services and the money involved in supporting and educating children and adults with autism, doesn't anyone think about what will happen when the parents of all these now children are gone?? Find the answer before this affects even more children, and the wallets of every neuro-typical person, which we all know many don't believe in hand-outs and will likely start referring to autism services as entitlements!

[T-smom]

The CDC recently reported that 1 in 88 American children and 1 in 54 boys have autism in the US. After the CDC released the new autism rate, Dr. Geri Dawson, Chief Science officer at Autism Speaks went on national television last month and called the autism increase a national "health crisis" and an "epidemic". Those were her exact wrod. She's right.

Please click on the link below to see a graph of the autism increase from 1975-2009.

http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2010/10/22/got-questions-answers-to-your-questions-from-the-autism-speaks%E2%80%99-science-staff-2/

Now what would cause such a tremendous increase in autism?

Autism effects everyone. Every community in the country has a population of children with autism. These children require services in school and, as they age out of the school system, they'll require services when they are adults. Cost of lifetime care for a child with autism is estimated to be $3 million per child. Multiply that figure by 1 in 88 kids!

The bigger story here is what is causing the increase? What toxins in our children's environment is poisoning our kids. Experts from the US EPA, NIEHS and UC Davis have publically stated that autism is not soley genetic and that chemicals in the environment play a signficant role. They also emphasized that the increase due to so called "better diagnosing" which only accounts for 26% of the cases.


Listen to what the experts from US EPA, NIEHS and UC Davis have to say about environmental factors in this podcast below:

Subcommittee on Children's Health hearing entitled, "State of Research on Potential Environmental Health Factors with Autism and Related Neurodevelopment Disorders."
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 (click link)


http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=1ab3cf42-802a-23ad-4a3a-686da83bf6d0

A large perceentage of the autism cases are "unexplained" according to Autism Speaks. Autism Speaks says:

"Based on the abovementioned research, approximately 53% percent of the increase in autism prevalence over time may be explained by changes in diagnosis (26%), greater awareness (16%), and an increase in parental age (11%). While this research is beginning to help us understand the increase in autism prevalence, half of the increase is still unexplained and not due to better diagnosis, greater awareness, and social factors alone. Environmental factors, and their interactions with genetic susceptibilities, are likely contributors to increase in prevalence and are the subject of numerous research projects currently supported by Autism Speaks."

The increase in autism prevalence is real and the crisis is growing. Autism now effects more children than childhood diabetes, cancer and aids combined. More families are affected by autism today then ever before. Lets get to the bottom of this crisis!

[mikies123]

"It's the environment, stupid" which include vaccines and Autism Speaks has no credibility when discussing this. Its clearly evident by their leadership when they misdirect autism research into genetics and stupid redundant research. Autism Speaks is willfully negligent.

[popcares]

It is a little hard to believe that Pediatics and the CBS staff are suddenly concerned that hundreds of thousands of children with autism are approaching graduation and their future to become gainfully employed unlikely.

I would be less cynical had Pediatrics and the CBS staff been urging public health officials .. twenty years ago .. to identify what was "causing" so many to become autistic in the first place?

In fact .. I doubt Pediatrics or CBS staff made ANY serious effort to question those claiming the increase in autism is not real .. just the result of a "broader definition" or "better diagnosing" .. and .. with "early intervention" many will simply "outgrow" autism.

In my opinion .. Pediatrics and CBS has the same "let's move on, no problem here" attitude as did public health officials who still maintain these hundreds of thousands of maturing young adults have ALWAYS been here.

[mikies123]

I don't know which planet PEDIATRICS studied for their autism employment numbers, but it doesn't match the real world of gainfully employment of young adults with autism on the planet I inhabit. In fact none of the young adults with the kind of autism I see (and there are lots) will ever hold down a job or be independent.

[maurinemeleck]

These statistics are comepleely incorrect and I have no idea where they came from. Other studies have shown the numbers of those on the spectrum that carry jobs are no more than 1 in 10(and many are part time jobs even) Tens of thousands of chidren who will reach adulthood in the next few years will never be able to hold jobs or live independently. When will we declare autism a national health crisis? When will the fully vaccinated vs fully unvaccinated study of children be done? The government, doctors and the media have failed our children and us. What;s going to happen to all these young adults. We are not prepared.
Maurine Meleck, SC

[amdachel]

Notice these stories about autistic adults recently published.

May 12, 2012, Boston Globe: An autistic son leaves the nest

http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2012/05/12/autistic-son-leaves-nest/Wu2Jl12RsVXFAvIjcMdngL/story.html

May 13, 2012, Reading (PA) Eagle No happy ending: One family's struggle with autism

http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=385870

Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism http://www.ageofautism.com/

[amdachel]

Dr. Thomas Insel, head of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee created by Congress to deal with autism has warned that we need to prepare for a million people "who may be in need of significant services." He also said that 80 percent of Americans with autism are under the age of 18. Keep in mind that when we talk about autism, we're always talking about CHILDREN WITH AUTISM. The rate of one in 88 comes from studies of eight year olds, not eighty year olds. No one has ever shown us a comparable rate among adults, especially those with classic autism, whose symptoms can't be denied. That simple fact should scare us all. Something has dramatic disabled a generation of U.S. children and nothing is being done to address it.

Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism http://www.ageofautism.com/

[amdachel]

Lindsey Tanner's report doesn't give us a valid look at the dire circumstances hundreds of thousands of children will be facing.

Here is a story from the NY Times from Sept, 2011. Their reports are much more ominous than
Autistic and Seeking a Place in an Adult World
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/us/autistic-and-seeking-a-place-in-an-adult-world.html?pagewanted=all
People with autism, whose unusual behaviors are believed to stem from variations in early brain development, typically disappear from public view after they leave school. As few as one in 10 hold even part-time jobs. Some live in state-supported group homes; even those who attend college often end up unemployed and isolated living with parents.
And here's what USA Today had to say on May 7, 2012.

http://www.usatoday.com/USCP/PNI/Business/2012-05-07-PNI0507biz-phx-autism--PNIBrd_ST_U.htm reported,

"According to the latest U.S. Department of Labor statistics, only 17.8 percent of people with disabilities were employed in 2010, down from 19.2 percent in 2008.

"For adults with autism, the national employment rate is just 10 percent, according to SARRC."

Anne Dachel, Media editor: Age of Autism http://www.ageofautism.com/