Job Programs for Adults
Empowering Adults with Autism
On November 11, 2017, Delmarva Power, an Exelon company, announced the establishment of a job program for adults with autism in the Philadelphia area. Delmarva Power is collaborating with a job placement company called The Precisionists that specializes in helping people with disabilities find jobs.
The Precisionists
Using Their Strengths in Job Placement
The Precisionists, Inc. or TPI is based in Wilmington, Delaware. In addition to people with autism, they also work with disabled veterans and people with hearing and or vision problems. Founded in July 2016, the company is modeled on Specialisterne. The word is Danish for “the specialists,” and Specialisterne is based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Its founder, Thorkil Sonne, has a son with autism. He noticed that his son had both neurotypical intelligence and a terrific eye for detail.
Adult with Autism Unemployed or Underemployed
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people with autism are either unemployed or underemployed, and Sonne wanted to establish a company that would match autistic people with jobs that would let them use their strengths. Sonne knew that many companies struggled to find people who could perform repetitive and tedious employment like software testing or data entry, and he believed that an adult with high-functioning autism might be a better candidate for such work than a neurotypical person.
Specialisterne
Helping World Wide
Specialisterne has existed since 2004 and has spread to 17 countries, including the United States. They assess and train their clients as well as match them with employers.
Similarly, people taking part in The Precisionists program need to undertake a four-week long training program. Those who make it through can look forward to project-based work like entering and analyzing data, updating and managing databases, and process solar application requests and invoices.
Pilot Program
Expansion to Sister Utilities
The Precisionists and Exelon launched a pilot program in which 12 high-functioning autistic people are working at Delmarva Power. It has been so successful that the program is getting expanded to Delmarva Power’s sister utilities: Pepco in DC and Maryland and Atlantic City Electric in southern New Jersey. The Precisionists hope to secure employment for 10,000 Americans with disabilities by 2025.
Job Placement Makes Company Better
Gary Stockbridge, the Delmarva Power region president, is enthusiastic about The Precisionists’ program and the new employees. He said, “They are productive, they’re effective, they are making us a better company.”
Graduate of Pilot Program
Autism Flaws Can Be Great Strengths
The employees themselves cite their attention to detail as one of their great strengths. Michael Stat, one of the graduates of the training program explained, “Other people might call it OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder, but for people on the spectrum, it’s a joy to find one or two things that might be off in like a thousand.” He was diagnosed with autism at the age of 26 ten years ago.
Stat then went on to describe how it felt to be part of the program, especially since he went undiagnosed until adulthood. “As a kid, it wasn’t even on people’s lips, like people didn’t even know what autism even was unless it was somebody who was entirely nonverbal, so I mean just being here and being a part of this, it’s just extremely exciting.”
Focused on Technical Skills
Kaylin Morris, a contract worker, was one of the first four workers to be hired in June. She has Asperger’s syndrome. Before joining The Precisionists program, Kaylin had been looking for a job for three years – and come up empty. She described some of the problems that people with autism can have ranging from social difficulties to increased susceptibility to depression and anxiety. She appreciated that The Precisionists program focused more on the technical skills that people with autism can develop rather than their social skills struggles.
The Autism Cliff
The Range in Autism Disability
Autism is more formally known as “autism spectrum disorder” or ASD. The spectrum part of the name refers to the range of disability: some people with autism have relatively mild symptoms and can live independently while others have severe symptoms and need constant care. Asperger’s syndrome, which was once considered a separate condition, is now considered a type of autism. One out of 68 children is diagnosed with ASD; the vast majority are boys.
Federal Law Does NOT Help Adults with Autism
Federal law requires that children with autism be provided a range of services to help them, like speech therapy and behavior management. The key word, unfortunately, is “children.” Older teens with autism age out of the various programs and lose their eligibility once they graduate from high school. Their parents often struggle to find replacement services to help them – and over 25 percent of people with autism receive no help at all after graduating from high school. Parents of such children have often compared the sudden shortage of services to falling off a cliff.
Filling in the Gap
The Precisionists and Specialisterne are trying to address this sorry state of affairs by offering training and employment opportunities to high-functioning adults with autism. In April 2017, The Precisionists began working with UBS, a company in Nashville, Tennessee. Like Delmarva Power, UBS would hire adults with autism on a contract basis to work on a variety of projects.
Aspiritech
Seeing a Void and Making a Change
In Chicago, Illinois, Moshe and Brenda Weitzberg have a son with autism who successfully made it through college – and then had trouble getting a job that fit his education and experience. Like the founders of The Precisionists and Specialisterne, the Weitzbergs had noticed that people with autism had attributes like, attention to detail, superior concentration, and ability to perform repetitive tasks that lend themselves to software testing.
Neurodiversity
To help their son and people like him, they founded a company called Aspiritech. It is a software testing and quality assurance company that describes itself as “harnessing the power of neurodiversity.” Since 2010, it has been providing autistic people with jobs in software testing.