Attitudes of Employment supports professionals

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Being that I work with lots of professionals who work with autism, I am learning that a lot of these professionals who work for organizations who provide employment supports have a looping mindset inside a box. I ask them what jobs they offer and most of the entry-level positions doing menial tasks recently. When I often ask they these people aren't doing more I often get this response. "Yes but they have to want to do these things and have these amazing gifts and talents that I don't have. However, when it comes to wanting most of the time they put their clients into positions that are convenient to the job coaches and employment support coordinators.

I am thinking that they have lots of other options that they could be looking at by offering free classes such as computer programming, and other types of software tutorials that they need to be inviting their clients to and they aren't.

I had a job years ago working for the state employment service here in the UK, alongside disability employment advisers, and what I saw was that much of this came down to contractual performance targets. Basically the training/employment service providers had their performance measured by quantity of placements and how quickly they got someone placed, rather than quality of placement or service user satisfaction. So the financial incentive was always to just get as many people placed as possible in the easiest roles to fill, as that was either more profitable to the service provider, or in the case of non-profit/charitable providers, the only way to keep the services financially viable and available. That may work differently where you are, of course, as it depends how such services are funded.

Twilight:
You are exactly correct. They do place many people below their potential not unlike public education placing students with special needs in programs that do not suit them. But there may be another reason.
A lot of the programs have to have an agreement with the work location and often higher paying locations do not have to look at that population for their work staff. Unfortunately it is incumbent of the applicant if the job matches their abilities because often job coaches have a limited scope and can not place higher functioning adults in jobs that will challenge them.

Employment support professionals also don't want to get their clients jobs that pay more than what the employment support professionals are making.

Most of the employment support professionals I have encountered don't know much about autism. Maybe they took a course on autism in college or they visited a self contained classroom at a local school, but that does not make them experts. They also don't seem to understand that some of us aren't considered disabled enough to qualify for medicaid, Medicare, or social security disability and because of that it is necessary to get a job that offers health insurance.

Yeah Elaine, these people are losers obviously.

Very lacking in knowledge.

Not necessarily. Some actually work with the Autism world and many of them are social workers, working with Regional centers and department of rehabilitation to get people with unique needs employed. But they restricted to the contracts and contacts that they have.

I believe attitudes of employers will have to be part of the change process.

Read what Elaine said. Many of these workers don't know jack about autism.

You are right though that employers are calling the shots.

Together is a bad dice roll for the autistic person.

I was placed in a program for 14 years ago after the psychologist, who saw me once for 45 minutes, said that I could not work because he felt that I have a bad temper and could not ever handle a high-stress environment. So I was put on a 30-day work evaluation at a sheltered workshop which I passed. However, vocational rehab left me at the mercy of the supported employment program of this center which only placed their clients into entry-level positions and kept them down.

I was placed in a warehouse position for 8 years working on the production line doing inventory scanning which was great at first. Then I began focusing on my field in school and wanted to start building experience and developing skills and they didn't seem to teach me anything new there. I also dealt with a lot of workplace bullying, gossip and sexual harassment there. Sadly my job coach was just as mean if not lazy. When I told her that I wanted a different job, I got excuses and discouragement.
1. "The economy is really bad and jobs are scare."
2. "They're going to cut bus services."
3. "We really afraid if you went somewhere else that you would not keep that job and if you try to come back you would not get your old job back."

This job coach didn't do anything for us, instead, she pushed her weight around bullying her clients and going off to yakety-yak with the boss. She only provided a place to work for us which was disgusting.

I’m late diagnosed.
My counselor told me I made a lot of adjustments and adaptations on my own.
Theater and musical instruments have been a God send.

I have used ideas from both in my 40 year careeer. My 20’s were chaotic but I found my niche about 33.

I have been called professionally weird
and told things like you don’t talk like a counselor or give pat answers.

My rough oatches were big just in my 20’s. Prior to my diagnosis my immediate supervisor helped me navigate tricky waters which were mostly relational with other colleagues in my area.
Like all jobs there are those that are not so good and forget the important Do no harm.

Me
Still too old to know it all.

[quote="drlaugh"]I’m late diagnosed.
My counselor told me I made a lot of adjustments and adaptations on my own.
Theater and musical instruments have been a God send.

I have used ideas from both in my 40 year careeer. My 20’s were chaotic but I found my niche about 33.

I have been called professionally weird
and told things like you don’t talk like a counselor or give pat answers.

My rough oatches were big just in my 20’s. Prior to my diagnosis my immediate supervisor helped me navigate tricky waters which were mostly relational with other colleagues in my area.
Like all jobs there are those that are not so good and forget the important Do no harm.

I have since outgrown the supported employment scenario and I have moved forward in a great career too. However, it breaks my heart to see where most autistics end up in programs with small-minded people with very little knowledge about autism.

True.

Perhaps I can create a new job in retirement where I address that. (I’m very close)

These job coaches don't like doing any more than they have to. I went through several employment support professionals because they kept leaving to take better jobs. All the ones that I had kept trying to place me at local daycares after I told them repeatedly that my certifications for childcare expired and that I didn't want to go back to working at daycares. The daycare I used to work at was a hellhole and I didn't want to go through that kind of trauma again. Not to mention, you don't even need a college degree to work in daycares. I didn't go to college so I could get a job that doesn't even require a college degree. Most employment support professionals and job coaches are lazy and useless in my opinion.

Sad......