The Families with ASD's Parents of Adults with Autism Task Force has been working hard since our first meeting in June, 2009, on our five part plan to ensure services for our adults with autism. The next couple of pages are a list of resources/providers that filled out and returned a survey that the task force put together to help find resources here in the Greater Cincinnati area that currently services adults with autism. This is not a complete list of service providers for adults, but it is the completed list of providers that took the time to return our phone calls, and answer our 26 questionnaires.

The Task Force's first meeting was June 6th, 2009.

The 5 Phases of the Adult Task Force are as follows:

• Phase 1: Compile a list of questions/concerns we have for our adults with autism and create a survey to interview providers that are currently servicing adults with autism. Our survey results can be found listed after the 5 phases.
• Phase 2: The Parents of Adults with Autism discussed as a group our findings and look at what services are out there and what is missing. We will then decide as a group how to best move forward. In other words, lay out our plan of attack for Phase 4
• Phase 3: Our completed list will be included in the 2009 Autism Yellow Pages(c) for families so that they can see what is currently out there for their adults with autism.
• Phase 4:
  • Part 1: We will take our information about the organizations out there that we have collected and go forward to help spark changes:
    Advocate for services, and fill the gaps of services not there. How? We will work as a team to visit organizations and have discussions about the great need for services for our adults and see how we can help them get ready for the large influx of adults with autism heading there way. We are already planning on going out in teams of 2 or more to area businesses on our list to go over our results and praise what they are good at and see if we can gently point out things they might need to relook at.
  • Part 2: At our July Adults with Autism Task Force Meeting, it was decided to set up Tours of Facilities that currently serve adults with autism so we can get a better feel for what they offer our adults. Doug Blecher, has been working very hard to set up the tours and who you need to contact if you would like to join him on the tours. He has several tours already planned that will begin in October of 2009. Please contact Doug at the Autism Family Resource Center, 513-444-4979 if you would like to sign up for our tours.
  • Part 3: There are many organizations now that are successfully servicing children with autism. We are going to invite organizations to meet with the Task Force to discuss our findings with the organizations and see how we can work with them to help get ready for our soon to be adults.
• Phase 5:Help Develop Services that are non-existent: As a team, we are going to look at areas where services for our adults are pretty much non-existent and try to bring in companies, colleges, universities, and other community organizations to help create services where there are none. We will share our findings and the projected need with the community leaders and map out a plan with an action time line to make sure these programs are created. This may include grant writing and looking for corporate sponsorship to help in this matter. Phase 5 will begin in December of 2009 and continue throughout 2010 and beyond.

Of course the Parents of Adults with Autism Task Force is going to be an ongoing process, but we hope to have the major groundwork completed by December of 2009. Then we will continue to monitor and advocate as needed throughout 2010 and beyond. New businesses will develop, others will leave, so we will have to continue the task force to make sure changes are happening. Also, we know that many older businesses have the "old school" thinking and it may take a few visits from our task force to get them stepping into a new direction. We have the dedicated parents, so it won't be a problem.

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