Vocational Rehabilitation/TEACCH

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So far I have not been able to get help from my Vocational Rehabilitation and my local TEACCH center. It seems like the people I've talked to have discouraged me from using the services. Also, I get the feeling that the Vocational Rehabilitation does not know much about Asperger's syndrome. I talked to someone from the TEACCH center over the phone, and they suggested I might not have Asperger's because I am an adult. He told me when one has Asperger's and they become an adult that it changes to other things. However, I was diagnosed when I was thirty three years old at the Menninger Clinic in Houston Texas. My father and I flew there, and I stayed there for several days undergoing numerous tests which they finally came to the conclusion that I have Asperger's syndrome. I've just recently moved to a new area so I'm hoping I'll have better luck with the Vocational Rehabilitation and the TEACCH center in my area, but I have my doubts. I'm just wondering if anybody has experienced what I have? Also, does anyone have suggestions?

The TEACCH guy is wrong--of course you still have AS after you're an adult. Dunno who trained him, but they need to go back to school.

I have had some experience with both TEACCH and voc rehab, and the only advice I can give you is that you have got to be the person to direct them, not the other way around. You have to know what you want and make a nuisance of yourself until you get it.

I really wonder what the TEACCH person thinks AS changes to in adults.

If they're anything like the Vocational Rehab people I've dealt with (extensively and to endless frustration), they don't know their bureaucratic @$$es from holes in the ground about autism or anything else and their most finely honed skill is running out the clock every day so they can go home and collect a paycheck without ever pulling their thumbs out of their sphincters. Oh, there is one other thing they are very, very good at - passing the buck - no matter what needs doing, its always somebody else's responsibility.



Hallelujah! Praise Jeebus! My autism turned into a food allergy! Isn't the level of ignorance astounding? I wonder how they suppose a neurological disorder 'changes into something else'? Do people outgrow deafness or dyslexia? Maybe Santa will bring me a unicorn pony!

Well, I wish you the best, but I can tell you I went through a training program three years ago with the Vocational Rehab organization in my state (which I didn't need, because I was already trained and licensed in another state, but Big Brother must extort his fees).

I completed the program, with the instructor haranguing me constantly for not being an aggressive enough salesman to suit him (though he knew I wasn't going to work for him after the program). I only wanted to open a private studio and work by appointment, so salesmanship was not an issue for me. His was a busy walk-in shop with lots of people coming and going and two extremely LOUD doorbells that both chimed every time anyone touched the door. The conditions were excruciating for me but I endured it for the required six months.

I explained my disability to the man repeatedly, to which he invariably insisted that I was only 'shy' and he could cure me of that. I'm 52 and worked in broadcasting for 30 years - shyness is not my problem, but crowds, sudden changes and sensory overloads are. In any case, I completed the entire program, I even have the paperwork in his wife's handwriting to prove it, it remained only for him to schedule my final practical test before a State Health Department Inspector, at which point he became verbally abusive and insisted that he would not schedule that test unless I could 'learn to work them customers!' I actually thought he was about to physically assault me.

He kept the tuition money, left me without the license I need in order to work legally, Rehab Services can only offer to put me through the entire program again and cannot understand why an autistic person doesn't find going through that torture all over again with yet another ignorant instructor (who thinks people with AS have 'tremors') to be a fair and generous solution. The State Board of Private Career Education claims they can do nothing, though I have the paperwork proving that I completed the program, and even an organization that calls itself 'Disability Rights Commission' can do nothing except mouth platitudes and pass the matter back to the Vocational Rehab people who just look stupid and shrug. I even contacted my Congressman who dictated very polite letters, but was too busy with his Senatorial campaign to help. His response was "I only write the laws, I can't enforce them.'

This has been the result of three years of contacting and emailing and letter writing. What I have learned is this: If you are not either a child, in a wheelchair or drooling on yourself, your disability is not real. If they can't fix the problem with a wheelchair ramp, they're clueless. An adult with autism? Surely you jest. There's no such animal. And even if there were, autistic adults aren't cute or pathetic enough and don't make people feel all warm and fuzzy and entice them to give money to nonprofits.

Not to pee on your parade, but be prepared for disappointment. I certainly hope your experience is better than mine.

lol it changes to other things when you are an adult...I would have asked them other things like what?

Im surprised by this. When I was a child the doctors or psychologists or whatever they had at the TEACCH place in Asheville were the ones who diagnosed me as having aspergers after my kindergarten teachers recommended to my mom that she take me there. I remember them all being very friendly and seemingly knowledgeable. I firmly believe whomever you spoke too is rather misinformed or, to be blunt, a moron.

I dunno, but I'm sure it's not an official TEACCH idea. I e-mailed them when I was first diagnosed, and they helped me out some with first steps, learning more about my own mind and how I could work with it. They never said anything about my being an adult and not being eligible for diagnosis.

If they said, "It's not possible to have the onset of AS symptoms in adulthood," then that would have made sense, because autism is atypical brain development, and brain development takes place mostly before the age of six or seven. You could have autism-like symptoms in adulthood, but they'd be caused by an injury or an illness or something of that sort and be diagnosed as a TBI or social anxiety or repetitive motion disorder or something like that.

But thinking that autism doesn't stay autism once you're an adult--that's just silly, with no foundation in science.

Those are interesting ideas. However, I've never had a traumatic brain injury. I don't have a repetitive motion disorder or social anxiety. Also, if I had social anxiety I could never have taken theater classes and speech classes while in college. I just think that guy I talked to at the TEACCH center did not know what he was talking about, and for some reason did not want to help me since I'm an adult with Asperger's.