Autism Transition Programs That Truly Understand

When profoundly autistic individuals age out of the school system at 22, many families are left without support or options. In this episode of Autism Labs, Mike Carr shares how he and his wife faced this challenge with their nonverbal son, who has seizures and aggressive behaviors. After being told their son was "unemployable" and turned away by programs, they created J13—a program for adults with severe autism and complex needs. J13 offers structured outings, peer connections, and trained staff who manage behaviors without exclusion. The result: reduced aggression, increased social engagement, and even part-time jobs. For many families, J13 offers hope and a future once thought out of reach.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction & Recap
• 0:53 What to Look for in an Adult Program
• 1:44 When Every System Says No
• 2:32 Who J13 Was Built to Serve
• 3:24 The Realities of Severe Autism
• 4:35 Inside the J13 Experience
• 6:00 From Unemployable to Employed

Transcript

Mike Carr (00:05):

Welcome back to the second episode on transitioning to adulthood and Aging out of the school system. And just to catch you up, last week we sort of introduced this series under the autism labs label. We're trying to help parents in the transition journey. And as a reminder from last time, our son's 35 years old. He's severely autistic, he's nonverbal, he has seizures, pica behavior, and all kinds of other challenges. So we've sort of gone through this path for a number of years and wanted to share with you some of our learnings. So this episode's about what to look for in a program as you get close to that aging out of the school system and you're looking for someplace where your adult child is going to continue to grow and thrive and prosper and be happy. And there's sort of two key elements. One is you've got to find a program that you can trust.

(00:53):

I think that goes without saying. The second one though is a little bit less obvious or less intuitive. And that is program that gives you hope. Now, this is hard toward the country and for this population, the folks that have kids that have multiple intellectual development disabilities and have behavior problems and all kinds of issues to find a program that will accept them's tough and we couldn't find one. So we ended up starting our own a few years ago under the J13, the John 13 banner. And I want to tell you a little story. And so picture this story and picture yourselves as the parents in this story. This is really what J13 has been able to accomplish where we've arrived at after the last two years. So you're 21-year-old son is aging out of the school system now he's been kicked out yet another program for biting and kicking what's new, right?

(01:44):

A lot of programs aren't set up to handle that in Texas. You took your son to the workforce commission like we did in an attempt to get some help find vocations. And after about a five minute review, they said, Nope, your son is unemployable. Exactly what they told us. You've been on the waiver list, let's say for 10 years, but you've got another 10 years to go before you're getting any kind of financial support. What are you going to do with your son when he turns 22 and he exits the school system in a matter of months? This is what J13 is all about, right? We serve these young adults and we serve these families. This is why we were started. We serve our son and we just completed summer camp and I think we had a total of 20 families in that summer camp and their kiddos off and on during that program, we're targeting those that are severely autistic.

(02:32):

Those that have the multiple intellectual or development disabilities that get kicked out can't qualify for other programs. Who are these folks? Well, they often can't talk, so they get frustrated because they aren't easily understood. And we think as a result of this frustration, often they exhibit aberrant behavior. For example, and these are all real life examples. They pull your hair really hard to where you have to bend over and they might even pull some roots of your hair out. This happens, it has happened multiple times. They scratch your neck and draw blood and you're going around for a week saying, what in the world happened to you? And you've got to explain what was going on. Or they bite your arm really hard to wear bruises, and you can see the teeth marks in your arm or they'll kick you or they'll actually punch you in the face or you have 'em out in the community, maybe took 'em to Chili's or McDonald's and they steal someone's fries right off their plate has happened.

(03:24):

Or they scream at HEB or your local grocery store, or they pull their pants down and we're at a Costco or a target. These are the kinds of behaviors. Unfortunately, this population exhibits our son has exhibited, and they also have the other medical issues. They have the seizures or they have PICA or they have echo or who knows. So what happens? Well, you as a parent of this kind of a child, once they age out of school system, they're typically living at home by themselves, with no friends, with no job, with no future. But that's the best you can do. I mean, you're exhausted. You've tried everything. There's no program out there that'll take 'em. Or if you get lucky enough to get in one, they get kicked out when they've punched somebody in the face. Well, that's why we started J13. We get them out of the bedroom, we get 'em off their computer tv, we give 'em out into the community.

(04:15):

For example. These are all things we did during summer camp. We take 'em to a crux climbing center or to a splash shack or to an altitude trampoline park, and they don't go by themselves. They go with others, same age, same set of issues and challenges, and they build friendships that you never thought would happen. And they learn to communicate even if they're nonverbal. They learn how to communicate through smiles, through gestures, elbowing one another, and they learn to manage their frustration. They become less aggressive, but more active, more social, more engaged in life. And guess what? They're happier and smiles start to appear and you start hearing a lot of laughter and the screaming and the scratching, and it's less frequent. They don't get kicked out of J13 even when they bite or punch or kick because our team's trained in advance to handle this.

(05:06):

We have protocols in place and processes in place, and this is the kind of program we want you to seek out. They're far and few between. We had to start our own, but we think they're starting to surface. And you can't believe this is possible. Parents in our program cannot believe that their kiddos not getting kicked out. And you'll hear the joy in their voices when they realize they're not going to kicked out even though they caused some incident in the last outing during summer camp or whatever. It's, and we've seen the tears and we've heard the emotion in parents' voices. Their son or daughter is finally having fun out in the community. Their adult child is learning, is building job skills at something they actually enjoy doing. They might even find part-time employment. Our son, Texas Workforce Commission unemployable, well, guess what, folks? We found him a part-time job that paid more than minimum wage for himself.

(06:00):

And one of his buddies after TWC said, no way. Not possible. That can happen and it pays more than minimum wage. And mom and dad, the parents now have hope. We've been able to do this at J13. It has not been easy, but we've learned sort of the secret sauce and there's one focus area that really has moved the needle, and I was the biggest skeptic. I just thought this was nonsense. We were wasting time even talking about this when we had all these other challenges. So next episode, I'm going to take you through what that is and some of the research that supports our journey down this path. But by focusing on this one area, we've been able to achieve what quite frankly, a lot of folks felt was impossible. So until next week, have a great one and talk to you then.