Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyah
This is a really sad situation. Does anyone know the kind of resources available to parents who have autistic children, particularly those that reach adulthood?
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Not nearly enough IMO and it's constantly shrinking.
The programs I'm involved with recently just cut half their kids, focusing on behaviour stuff and cutting off support for more life skills stuff (i.e. teaching kids how to bathe, cook, etc as they grow up).
Even our support I thought wasn't going to be renewed and it would really be the worst possible time. Fortunately we're ok for a little while more, but paying for cognitive behaviour therapy and occupational therapists and stuff myself is probably in my near future.
And I'm lucky to be in a position that I've been able to afford a private school specifically for autistic kids when I needed, or special summer camps with workers skilled enough to be able to work with these kids, or paying a babysitter 3x the normal rate because the pool of sitters with the necessary experience is small...
And my kid is high functioning. I can't imagine what someone who can't afford the help and couldn't get government support would do, I'd feel like just getting into the car one day and instead of going to get groceries driving to the Yukon and live with the bears or something.