An Artificial Distinction: Services for Children and for Adults

What is needed is a breakdown of the artificial distinction between services for children and services for adults. Autism is the same in children and in adults.

Ronald Kallen, a pediatric nephrologist in Illinois, wrote this in a letter to the New York Times (May 31). Kallen has a 23-year-old autistic son who's non-verbal and still lives at home. Noting that Illinois "ranks at the bottom in the provision of services for developmentally disabled adults," Kallen writes that "[l]ike all parents of adults with autism, we dread the day when we will have to find an alternative living arrangement."

There are five other letters, some from parents and some from professionals, in response last's op-ed by Karl Greenfeld about autism not being only a childhood condition---though if you look at the promotional literature and websites for most autism organizations, you would think otherwise. As another parent wrote in a letter,

As I read the article by Karl Taro Greenfeld, I became alarmed that he had set up an opposition between adorable tykes (the subject of current research) and frightening adults (whom no one knows what to do with). But he identifies a real problem.

I like very much what Kallen, from whose letter I first quoted, wrote, that we need to do away with the "artificial distinction between services for children and services for adults." Discussions about services and supports have a way of falling into "camps" and "us vs. them" push-and-pulls. And that just hurts the individuals who need the services and supports more. Transitions are hard enough as it is for many on the spectrum: Why not try to do more to make such a huge transition---from school to (hopefully) employment and no longer living with one's parents---less wrenching and traumatic and even........easier?