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Friday, May 13, 2011

JobTIPS - Helping Folks with ASD Find Meaningful Employment

Do2Learn has developed JobTIPS, an exciting free program designed to help individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) gain meaningful employment.




Finding employment is tough for many individuals right now, but this is especially true for individuals with ASD who are seeking work. Communication, social, and organizational deficits often cause challenges and misunderstandings in the workplace in terms of task completion, interpersonal interactions, and coping with stress. These are challenges all of us face, but again, people with ASD may struggle more with managing these stressors.

JobTIPS approaches the goal of obtaining meaningful employment for folks with ASD in two ways:

1.      JobTIPS provides a free web-based curriculum that the user with ASD can in order to learn strategies on how to find, get, and keep a meaningful job. This includes videos, printable materials, situational stories, Why? boxes, and coping comics to make the content interactive and fun while facilitating deeper understanding of concepts and generalization of skills.



2. The Transitional Toolbox educates teachers, job coaches, parents, transition coordinators, Vocational Rehabilitation staff, and clinicians how to teach appropriate employment skills by providing them with strategies and materials across the developmental range. The content for this section is being developed now, and should be ready this summer!

We are excited for more people to learn and use JobTIPS, and are thrilled that JobTIPS has received such attention and praise recently! The Autism Society of America profiled JobTIPS in April, which you can check out here. Autism Speaks noted how JobTIPS helps to level the playing field, and the National Institutes of Health remark that JobTIPS fills a critical gap for teenagers leaving school and therefore most of their ASD-related services.

Check out JobTIPS and tell us what you think! What do you think is the hardest part of gaining meaningful employment for folks with ASD? And...what's your favorite part of JobTIPS! We love feedback!

2 comments:

  1. As a parent and professional, I love this website. I wish I had it on a CD or DVD, for those times when I don't have Internet access.

    The hardest part of getting meaningful employment is getting through the interview process. This is especially true with personality tests. Also, many employers do not understand the reasonable accommodations under the ADA to allow equal access to the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to perform the essential functions of the job. They are not familiar with alternative assessments. They are under the impression that the EEOC requires them to give the exact same assessment to every job seeker. And, like clockwork, they steer them to custodial.

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  2. Hi Teri, thanks for the comment. The interview process, as the first impression, is crucial AND challenging. You're right that more employers should be educated on how to both assess personality and skills, as well as how to flexibly structure jobs so that the essential function can be performed.

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