Long-term Concerns: Work and Safety

While education is the topic I write most about here, with my son getting older, two other issues that have become of growing concern are work---what job will Charlie have one day?---and safety---and not only about him running away or getting lost, but about the potential for abuse and, just to get every worry out, sexual abuse. Two recent news artlcle highlight these topics:

In Appleton, Wisconsin, the March 2nd Post-Crescent reports about Jimmy Brodhagen. Still a student at Menasha High School, Brodhagen works three days a week in five-hour shifts doing data entry for Ferguson, a local wholesale plumbing and piping business.

Brodhagen's story is hopeful and full of possibility and let's hope for more such accounts, and fewer like this: In Saginaw, Michigan, yesterday's Saginaw News reports that a 42-year-old teaching assistant at the Millet Learning Center, Todd L. Pesta, allegedly sexually assaulted a young woman in her 20s who's on the autism spectrum. The abuse was seen by another teaching assistant, who said she saw the assault while taking her own students to the cafeteria. Pesta, who has been terminated and faces up to 15 years in prison, says that he "accidentally touched the woman's breast."

Another concern, indeed, is---provided that Charlie does get a job, perhaps in the private sector---how to make sure that he is not being taken advantage of or otherwise ill-treated? I know he'll need to have a job coach, whose job will have come with some very serious responsibilities----the need for trained staff, teachers, therapists, aides, and really any professionals who interact with individuals on the spectrum is paramount.

In Cape Coral, Florida, Kellie Elders is asking the Local Advocacy Council for Mental Health to start a task force to "oversee the treatment of special-needs children, specifically in local schools," today's News-Press reports. Elders's 9-year-old daughter, Caitlin, has schizoaffective disorder with bipolar type and autism; the 10-year-old boy on the spectrum in Cape Coral was arrested at school. A 9-year-old with schizophrenia in Fort Myers was arrested back in October. Caitlin is now in a residential treatment center as "after she was injured when restrained at Lee schools, where officials struggled to handle her." Says Elders:

"Why are mentally ill children ... getting arrested when they are probably having a psychotic episode?"

The need for highly trained, carefully supervised and supported, and fairly compensated staff was a topic that came up several times when I was at Sunday's session to prepare for the Autism NJ Listening Tour. And when I think about work and safety for my son's future, it's all too clear why.