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10:45am July 24, 2013

➸ Janna's weird crap: autistic-auntie: mulder-are-you-suggesting: There aren’t a lot of...

autistic-auntie:

mulder-are-you-suggesting:

There aren’t a lot of services available for autistic adults, and it seems like the majority of times I hear about services that actually *are* for autistic adults, they tend to focus mainly (or, often, exclusively) on “the transition to…

Although I think absorbing it into DD services or general disability services is exactly as it should be.

Services aren’t supposed to be about your diagnosis. They’re supposed to be about what you need. And there’s no one specific diagnosis that has totally unique needs not needed by people with any other diagnosis.

It’s not like physically disabled people get totally separate services (I’m talking daily living support) for MS, rheumatoid arthritis, stroke, or spinal cord injury. There may be specific rehab, but not general services.

A lot of autistic people seem to believe autism is unique and should stand apart from other disabilities. And so consciously or not there’s an expectation that there will be “autism services” instead of DD services or cognitive disability services or disability services or occasionally psych services. Because seriously, not that unique. Everyone autistic I
know who has qualified for adult services is in the DD or general disability system or both, or occasionally physical disability services or psychiatric.

Adult services exist. They’re just not always set up right. And if they started making autism services totally separate, I wouldn’t want it. The best people for the job have no autism training. Imagine if they trained them all in autism it would be awful making them unlearn everything they think they know. Plus, the DD community is the closest community to a home I’ve ever had. It’s more diverse than the autistic community in every single possible way. It’s people United by common experiences, not by a diagnosis. (And is the only disability community I’ve ever been involved in that is as racially, economically, and ethnically diverse as the general population. Not to mention diverse in terms of disability. DD covers every basic kind of disability. Every one. And all of this diversity makes us a better community than most disability communities I’ve ever been in.)