AUTISM AND EMPLOYMENT

Knowledge of Self and Others

As a parent, you want to ensure that your bright child with autism spectrum disorder will have a bright future! And you are not alone. According to an Easter Seals survey, parents of children who have ASD were most worried about their children having independence in adulthood. Quality of life, fitting into society, and employment were also top concerns. Your knowledge of your child, your devotion, and your many varied experiences with your child make you the ideal coach. This book was written to help you, the parent, to raise your child with the foundational skills he or she will need for the future.

Your child with ASD is a unique individual with many strengths. But we know that, by definition, children with ASD all have some degree of weakness in social-communication skills. Social-communication problems are a defining feature of ASD and include difficulties with social interaction (social reasoning, interacting with peers, resolving conflicts), social tasks (joining in with peers and cooperative play), social cognition (making inferences, regulating emotions, understanding social situations), and pragmatics (appropriate verbal expression, body language, eye contact). We can expect that all children with ASD will struggle in at least some of these areas. An individual with ASD may not make eye contact with those speaking to him, may not acknowledge others if they say hello, may say things that are not tactful, or may even inadvertently hurt the feelings of others. Your child with ASD may not understand jokes easily, he may misread body language as having an opposite meaning from the intended meaning, might say private things in a public group setting, or have a "meltdown" over a disagreement instead of negotiating a better outcome. Often, a child with ASD cannot accurately read the body language of others or projects body language that looks as if she is "uninterested" in others, impeding the development of friendships. When children with ASD interact with classmates, they may show less reciprocity, or "give and take," than their peers. For example, she might talk about her high-interest area rather than having a true social exchange with her classmate. Children with ASD may not fully appreciate or know how to respond to the feelings of others, particularly if the feelings are not the same as their own. Your child may not fully use gestures and may not engage in peer talk or use of slang. Your child with ASD may be very bright in most ways, but lack "common sense" in the social-communication realm.

Most concerning for you as a parent, social-communication skill deficits could impact your child's ability to become independent one day. Strong social-communication skills help individuals to interact productively and positively with others for any job. This is true even for high-tech jobs or jobs where the employee works from home. There must be phone calls, emails, meetings, group work on projects, marketing of products, interfacing with clients or buyers, problem solving for technical and other issues — all of which require communication with others. And as an independent adult, your child will also need to problem solve with others by using social communication beyond the workplace in order to obtain and maintain housing, manage finances, have relationships, drive, obtain benefits, and otherwise get his or her needs met.

The most important milestone for your child with ASD in terms of future independence will be to get and maintain employment! In 2014 it was estimated by the CDC that one in sixty-eight children had ASD, and Autism Speaks — an autism advocacy organization — estimated in June of 2012 that 500,000 teens and young adults with autism would be entering adulthood within the following ten years. These young adults with ASD will need paid employment to become independent. As a parent, you hope that your child can do paid work that is on a par with his or her cognitive and educational level and that is interesting and satisfying. The workplace is also where your child is likely to develop friendships and build self-esteem. It is vital to consider what it takes for your child with ASD to get and keep a job, and to make sure that she has those skills before she reaches adulthood and wants to enter the workforce.

There is a great deal of information available, on the internet and elsewhere, listing and describing the skills that employers want in their employees. Some of these skills, such as technical knowledge or critical thinking skills, are considered "hard skills," but in fact many or most of the desired employee attributes are social-communication, or "soft" skills.

Soft skills are those attributes of an individual that enhance their ability to interact positively and productively with others. For example, adaptability, dependability, communication, respect, responsibility, strong work ethic, confidence, and working well under pressure are all soft skills. For many soft skills, such as teamwork and collaboration, conflict resolution, and negotiation, social-communication skills are essential. There are some soft skills that are not clearly related to or supported by social-communication skills, such as dependability and strong work ethic, but for most of the crucial soft skills that promote positive employment outcomes in youth (discussed at length in the next chapter) an individual needs a strong foundation of social-communication skills.

Children with ASD often have many strengths that would be valued in the workplace. For example, your child may have good "hard skills," or technical expertise. He may have a special interest area that he is an expert in and go to college to specialize in a certain field of knowledge. However, the skills that employers identify as most important or most lacking in job applicants, generally, are the soft skills. Research indicates that soft skills, which include and are often supported by social-communication skills, are at least as important as technical skills as predictors for employment and earnings. Your child with ASD will be in competition with other young adults when he or she wants to enter the workforce. In competitive employment, where social-communication and soft skills are in demand, your child may struggle to win the job that he or she is otherwise qualified for.

One study looking at employment outcomes of young adults with ASD found that they worked fewer hours, were paid less, and had less varied occupations than individuals with other conditions. In fact, ASD youth were the least likely to have ever worked for pay. An Easter Seals survey in 2008 found that approximately six in ten individuals with ASD aged sixteen or older had not yet looked for work, while three-quarters of typically developing, same-age individuals were already working. Almost eight in ten young adults with autism were still living at home after high school, compared to slightly less than one-third of typically developing young adults.

Why have the employment outcomes for young adults with autism been so poor? If you consider the nature of ASD, which is largely defined by problems with social-communication skills, and the demands of employers for soft skills that are often very much dependent on social-communication skills, it becomes clear. How can you, as a parent, work toward a more positive outcome in adulthood for your child with ASD? How can you bring his or her social-communication and soft skills to the level required for success as an adult?

The first question you might ask is, "Can my child learn these skills at school?" Your child's public school is charged by the federal government with developing skills leading to successful employment and independence after high school through the IEP (individualized education program). This movement from high school to adult life is called "transition" in the IEP. The IEPs of all students aged sixteen and over are required to include "transition services," defined as "a coordinated set of activities for a child ... that focus on facilitating his/her movement from school to work and independent living." We can anticipate that, for children with ASD, one of the primary challenges in their transition after high school will be social communication. In addition to transition services through the IEP (for ages sixteen and above), your child may have social work and speech-language pathology services in school to address social-communication issues. However, given the broad needs that your child with ASD may have in this area, and with the background of academic and time pressure, school services may be unable to fully address all the non-academic needs your child has before he or she completes high school. Also, school is only one kind of environment. A child's life outside of school with parents, family, and friends has the greatest variety of contexts and situations and the best potential for the most effective practice of social-communication and soft skills.

At school, there is naturally an emphasis on academic learning and you may find that your child with ASD is a good student who excels in academic areas. He or she may be an expert in a certain subject area and you may well anticipate college for your child, or some other career-related training or education after high school. Will going to college or other post-secondary educational experience buy time for your child to develop the needed skills and set him up for success in employment? While more time for maturation may be helpful, it is unlikely to resolve the issue of developing soft skills to the degree necessary. If simple maturation and social experience could develop social-communication and soft skills to the level that is needed, your child would not have those deficit areas relative to peers now, nor indeed a diagnosis of ASD. We know from research that social-communication and soft skills are predictive of success in life and have a significant impact on employment outcomes. Even if your child with ASD is bright academically, and perhaps especially if he or she is, there needs to be a strong focus on developing those social-communication and soft skills to maximize his or her potential in adulthood.

The social-communication skills that are highlighted in this book are the foundational underpinnings of certain soft skills which have been shown to be the most crucial for positive employment outcomes in young people. We will discuss those skills and related issues in detail in the next chapter. The necessary social-communication skills are, for the most part, inherently difficult to master for many individuals with ASD and require specific practice at a foundational level over an extended period of time in a variety of contexts. You as the parent have the greatest knowledge of your child, the greatest investment in your child developing into a productive and happy adult, and the most influence on it. You have contact with your child continuously over many years in a variety of different situations; you have the best teachable moments! You can assist your child in gaining these skills, but you are likely to need guidance in deciding which skills to target and how to do it. This book is designed to help you take a systematic approach to your child's development in those areas that are likely to impact his or her future the most.

THE SKILLS YOUR CHILD MUST HAVE FOR EMPLOYMENT

In Chapter One, we talked about the importance of soft skills for gaining employment, the relationship of social-communication skills to soft skills, the defining problems in these areas for individuals with ASD, and the statistics on employment for this group which are indicators of what needs to be done. In this chapter, we will outline the key soft skills that increase the chances for success in the workplace for young adults and identify specific foundational social-communication skills that support those soft skills. Chapters Three and Four will help you, the parent, in developing those social-communication skills to help your child to achieve employment and independence as a young adult. As noted earlier, the skills that allow a young person to attain employment, rather than just academic success, are the most crucial elements for future independence, as academic success does not necessarily predict employment success. Successful employment leads to independence! Since ASD is a condition that very particularly impacts social-communication skills, those skills will likely require explicit attention for a long time and across multiple contexts to make improvements substantial enough to develop the soft skills needed for employment. You, the parent, are in the best position to do this most effectively.

There is consensus among researchers that "soft skills" (which include social-communication skills) are at least as important as technical skills as predictors for employment and earnings. Employers are looking for soft skills even for highly technical jobs. But there are a wide variety of soft skills: good communication skills, positive attitude, teamwork, adaptability, dependability, responsibility, strong work ethic, confidence, working well under pressure, conflict resolution, writing skills, organizational skills, and so forth. Which soft skills are the ones most likely to increase the chances that a young adult will be successful in the workplace?

One group of researchers attempted to answer this question by conducting an extensive review of more than 380 resources from around the world looking at how soft skills impacted employment outcomes. They also looked at a broad spectrum of research on the topic and got input from other researchers, supervisors, employers, and young adults themselves. Their research yielded the following set of five key soft skills that appeared to increase the chances for success in the workplace for youth ages fifteen to nineteen:

1) Social skills

• Respecting others

• Using context-appropriate behavior

• Resolving conflict

2) Communication skills

• Oral

• Written

• Non-verbal

• Listening

3) Higher-order thinking

(includes the ability to identify an issue, and reach a conclusion after considering all the information and evaluating options)

• Problem solving

• Critical thinking

• Decision-making

4) Self-control

(leads to successful decision-making, resolution of conflict, and clear communication)

• Delay gratification

• Control impulses

• Direct and focus attention

• Manage emotions

• Regulate behaviors

5) A positive self-concept

• Delay gratification

• Self-confidence

• Self-efficacy

• Self-awareness and beliefs

• Self-esteem

• A sense of well-being and pride

As the parent of a child with ASD, you know that he may have difficulties with social skills, communication, higher-order thinking skills (including problem solving, critical thinking, and decision-making), self-control, and positive self-concept. Yet developing these soft skills is critical because they are the very ones that are most likely to help your child achieve and maintain employment, leading to independence. How can you teach these very broad skill sets? Let's start by examining the individual social-communication skills that make up and/or support these soft skills.

In considering the above categories and the soft skills listed, it is evident that the individual skills listed under each category could be broken down further, that is, they actually require the support of even more basic foundational skills. For example, "respecting others" would first require understanding that others may not feel the same way that the individual with ASD does, that all of us have our own feelings and beliefs, and that differences from one's own are acceptable. Understanding that others have their own feelings and beliefs is referred to as "theory of mind," an area of social cognition or emotional intelligence. Individuals with ASD may have difficulty with this concept, and they may struggle to comprehend the beliefs, attitudes, and emotions of other people. So, for children with ASD, we cannot just assume that they have the foundational social-communication skills that are needed to demonstrate "respecting others" in the workplace. To know that others have different beliefs and feelings than oneself and to be able to express acceptance of such differences requires first knowing one's own beliefs and feelings, i.e. one's own preferences and opinions, and we would expand this to include strengths and weaknesses. From this base, you can teach that others may differ in these areas and that this is quite normal and acceptable, and you can practice demonstrating or expressing acceptance of others. These are foundational social-communication skills that support conflict resolution, problem solving, and other soft skill areas in addition to "respecting others."

Although the soft skills "communication" and "social" are listed separately, functionally those and most of the other soft skills are supported by or stem from many of the same social-communication skills. The skills of impulse control, delaying gratification, and attention focus are possible exceptions to this, although the category "self-control" leads to successful decision-making, resolution of conflict, and clear communication. In other words, that category of "self-control" is partly a product of, or at least mediated by, social communication.