Newsday report in the Kansas City Star:

An 800 percent growth rate in children with autism over the past 20 years is translating into an explosion of adults with the condition, experts were told at a conference on Long Island this week. Now that the first large group has reached young adulthood, they need jobs and support programs.

Brenda Smith Myles, a professor at the University of Kansas, said even though autism covers a range of intellectual abilities, few young people with autism find meaningful work. She said only 12 percent considered high-functioning have jobs while only 6 percent with so-called classic autism are employed.

Concerns are mounting because programs that aid autistic children end between the ages of 18 and 21.

… [Expert Joanne] Gerenser commended several corporations, such as Walgreens, Home Depot and CVS, which have programs to hire people with autism. “What a great workforce people with autism are,” Gerenser said. “They don’t lie, they don’t gossip and they’re always on time.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 2:48 pm and is filed under autism, employment/jobs, independent living, public attitudes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.