Op-ed by Linda H. Davis in the Washington Post in honor of World Autism Awareness Day. Davis’ 21-year-old son Randy has autism.

While greater media attention on autism is certainly welcome, virtually all coverage of autism in recent years has focused on a cure or on the education of young autistic children. You would think that, like children in a fairy tale, autistic children never grow up. Yet parents are getting old, tired and ill caring for their adult children. And they are doing it while state and federal budgets, already lean, are getting perilously thinner. How is society going to pay for the permanent care of millions of our citizens? What kind of lives are we going to give them? How are we going to support their families, many of whom care for their children into adulthood as they themselves wear down?

… Though many Americans are familiar with the 1997 Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, which mandates a free and appropriate education until age 22 for children who have disabilities, few seem to know or care that there is no similar legal mandate for them after age 22. As states struggle to serve their most vulnerable citizens while dealing with budget cuts at all levels, the number of Americans with disabilities swells.

… It’s the big picture — who will love and care for Randy after his father and I are gone — that keeps me up at night.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 4:53 am and is filed under IDEA, NOT2BEMISSED, autism, families, first-person, independent living, intellectual/developmental disabilities, personal stories, young adults. 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.  Email This Post