Adulthood And Community Involvement

By Irene Campos
UCLA Public Health Intern
Guest Blogger

High functioning adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) face a myriad of unique challenges. Many young adults, for example, struggle to feel integrated into their surrounding communities. For this reason, professionals working with this population must keep in mind the importance of addressing and facilitating a successful transition into communities during treatment, so that these young adults with ASD can become active and contributing members. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research, services, and community supports that are designed specifically to address these specific transition needs for ASD adults. In recognizing this gap and the implications it has on young adults with ASD, FACT developed a unique program which is targeted at connecting transition aged adults with different types of experiences and supports that will enable them to smoothly transition into adulthood.

Within the autism community, there is a recognized lack of research, services, and community supports that are designed specifically to address the needs of transition aged adults. F.A.C.T., in recognizing this deficit and the implications it has on young adults with ASD,
developed a unique program which is targeted at providing transition aged adults with the type of experiences and supports that will enable them tosmoothly transition into adulthood.

The goal of F.A.C.T.'s Generating All Possibilities (G.A.P.) Program is to promote a successful transition into adulthoodfor a group of individuals with autism by providing them with vocational, educational and volunteer experiences. The volunteerism component, in particular, and the partnership F.A.C.T.established with the American Red Cross is geared at utilizing the G.A.P.students to increase emergency preparedness education at the community level among special populations, including children and other individuals with disabilities.Therefore, this unique program ultimately addresses two important issues—the transitional needs of young adults with autism and community integration.

For individuals on the autism spectrum, involvement in the community is considered an important component in the transition process from high school to adulthood. However,more support services and interventions designed to increase community participation among young adults with autism are needed. We need to get our youth involved in more community based leisure activities and away from isolated activities such as video games and watching television.  For this reason, F.A.C.T.'s G.A.P. Year Program was designed with a special component specifically aimed at promoting community involvement and engaging youth participants in community service and volunteerism.

F.A.C.T.has partnered with the American Red Cross Greater Los Angeles Chapter to extend emergency preparedness education to special populations in the community. As part of this program component, G.A.P. students have become official American Red Cross volunteers and become trained in delivering preparedness education presentations, including "Be Red Cross Ready" (ideal for 6th – 12th graders & adults audiences), "Prepare LA+ K.I.D.S. (ideal for 2nd– 5th graders) and the Disaster Safety Puppet Show (ideal for pre-school to 1st graders).  Leading these activities is beneficial for G.A.P. participants in a number of ways. For example, they will gain public speaking skills, they will work closely with other young adults their age and they will be actively involved in reaching out to special needs populations to increase
knowledge of disaster preparedness.

The American Red Cross component of the G.A.P. Program, thus, inspires change at the individual level as well as the community level. And most important it will allow the G.A.P. youth to gain skills that are important in a successful transition to adulthood.

If you would like to schedule a disaster preparedness presentation led by our G.A.P. students at your organization or school, please contact Jillian Van Leuven at 310-844-3112.