Newswise — Robin Lock is the director of Texas Tech's Burkhart Center for Autism Education and Research Center. With backing from the Texas Council for Developmental Disabilities, Texas Council for Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders and the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS), the center is dedicated to making reliable information about ASD services readily available to those who need them most.
"We are concerned that people do not know where to look for information about Autism and sometimes receive misleading information about institutions that do offer services for people with ASD," Lock said. "There are more than 1,200 services identified on the database so far. This is a really good start."
Also in the planning stages: the Burkhart Center is building a life-skills program to help adults at the highest functioning end of the autism spectrum become more self-sufficient members of society who can function in a vocational setting.
"We are looking at a twofold approach," Lock said. "We are going to train employers so they'll know how to work with these people and recognize their characteristics and needs. Then we will provide them with some hands-on material and a support system where they can call and have advice coming from the Burkhart Center.
Simultaneously, at the Burkhart center, students with autism will complete three semesters of job training and social skills classes to prepare them for the workforce. The first semester encompasses classroom learning, the second provides three months of training on the job, and the third semester focuses on social skills training, one of the hardest objectives for Autistic people to conquer.
"What we find with people with autism is that it is not performing the tasks of the job that gets them," Lock said. "It is the social part of the job. They don't understand that there is a mechanism for how to go to someone and express their needs. That is what we're working toward improving, and that is why we have faith that this program will generate positive results."
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